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OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR 



COMFORT AND STRENGTH FROM THE 
SHEPHERD PSALM 

THE PREACHER-PERSUADER 

WEEK-DAY PRAYERS 

PRAYERS FOR EVENTIDE 

SOCIAL PLANS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

WORKABLE PLANS FOR WIDE-AWAKE CHURCHES 

CHURCH PUBLICITY 







JA^ 



A^^ ^^^ / 5^ O ^? 



Roosevelt's Religion 



By 
CHRISTIAN F. REISNER 



.^^^^ 



tI)EABlree\)03^x» 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 



NEW YORK 



CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1922, by 
CHRISTIAN F. REISNER 



Printed in the United States of America 



mnQ72 

C1A690168 



TO YOUNG MEN 

IN THE HOPE 

THAT THEY MAY BE AS WISE AS WAS 

Mr. Roosevelt 

in appreciating and appropriating 

concrete christianity 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

President Harding's Testimony.. facing 10 
Leonard Wood's Testimony facing 11 

An Explanation 11 

I. Theodore's Childhood Home 19 

• n. His Own an Ideal Home 37 

in. A Helpful Father Himself 55 

IV Providentially Prepared for His Ca- 

71 
reer *^ 

V. The Essential of Success 90 

VI. A Humble Self-Confidence 112 

VII. A Courteous Christian Friend 135 

VIII. The Brother of His People 162 

IX. Public Duties Fearlessly Performed . . 184 
X. Preached and Practiced High Ideals . . 204 
XI. Was He a Christian? Others' Testi- 
mony 228 

XII. Was He a Christian? His Own Testi- 
mony 247 

XIII. A Pure and Reverent Mind 275 

XIV. Drinking and Prohibition 292 

XV. His Opinion of the Bible 305 

XVI. Did He Join the Church? 324 

XVII. Church Attendance and Work 341 

Books Used as References 371 

Index ^'^^ 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Copy of a Large Photograph Inscribed and 
Presented to a Sunday-School Teacher 
BY President Roosevelt Frontispiece 



FACINQ 
PAGE 



''Bill" Sewall and a Lad from the Roose- 
velt Military Academy 75 

The Simple Marble Slab which Marks Mr. 

Roosevelt's Last Resting Place 113 

A Famous Trio at Chautauqua, New York: 
Jacob A. Riis (on Left), Theodore Roose- 
velt, AND (Bishop) John H. Vincent 137 

The Visitors at the Grave During Thirty 
Minutes of an Ordinary Day 163 

Mr. Roosevelt's Favorite Photograph (and 
THE Choice of His Closest Friends) 185 

The Funeral Cortege Entering Christ 

Church at Oyster Bay 203 

The Earnest 'Treacher" in Action 225 

"Bill" Sewall's Letter Describing Mr. 
Roosevelt's Religion 231 

Grace Reformed Church, 15th Street N. W., 
Near Rhode Island Avenue, Washing- 
ton^ D. C 235 

Grace Reformed Church (Interior Views) . . 249 



10 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



The Bible Presented to Vice-President 
Roosevelt by the Harvard Republican 
Club 305 

Mr. Roosevelt's Outline of a Talk Given 

to a Bible Class in Oyster Bay 312 

The Inscription Prepared by Mr. Roosevelt 
FOR THE New Testament Given to Sol- 
diers Going Overseas ; 321 

The Oyster Bay Home (Christ) Church 329 

Two Church Doors 343 



WARREN G. HARDING 

MARION. OHIO. 



January 6, 19£1. 



Bev. Christian F. Reisner, 
650 West 157th St., 
Hew York City, 

Dear Sir: — 

Replying to your letter Deoemher 2l8t 
in which you request some expression from me 
concerning my impressions of "Theodore Boosevelt 
the Christian" - Permit me to say that I am 
convinced that Theodore Roosevelt had a devout 
helief in God and though a consistent churchman 
he never paraded his helief , hut it was evident 
in his writings, in his speeches and in hie 
conduct. His clean personal life is the hest 
proof of his faith and belief. 

That he was a close student of the 
Bihle was hut natural since he was ever a seeker 
after Truth, Unquestionably he believed in 
prayer, not only as a means of grace, but as 
a personal help and consolation. 



Yours truly 



'V^^»^5^ 



Personal •. 



Fort Sheridan, Illinois, 
January Twelfth. 
Hineteen Q?nenty-Ons. 



Sear Dr. Beisser: 

Answering yotir letter of the tenth: 

^Theodore EooseTOlt v/as a true Christian. Ho "believed 
In CrOd, and that all peoples must have XpiZ4^^^ that a nation 
forsaking its religion is a decadent nsftion. He was a church- 
goer, as an evidence of his failii and for ptirpose of worship. 
His life, his ideals and his acts established his faith in God. 
He was a reader of the Bible, I have no recollection of hearing 
him tatee the nan© of God in vain, I "believe that he gathered 
many of his ethical ideals from the Scriptures, His cotirage 
was maintained "by his sense of ri^teousnessand justice. He was 
clean in thou^t and speech; a man of "broad syn5)athy, a sycjjathy 
limited neither "by race nor creed. He was a doer of good works, 
and a strenuous advocate of those principles which are laid dowa 
in the Commandments* 



/ Sincerely yotxrs, 



r\ ^l/t>upu\ i-Ki-'V^ 



Dr. Giristian P. Resiner, 
550 W. 157th Street, 
Kew York City. 



AN EXPLANATION 

A RECENTLY published bibliography containing a 
list of over five hundred books and pamphlets about 
and by Theodore Roosevelt contains not a single arti- 
cle, pamphlet, or book about Mr. Roosevelt's religion. 
Religion was the heart of his life, the creator of his 
ideals, the sustainer of his courage, the feeder of 
his faith, and the fountain of his wisdom. Without 
religion the greatness of Mr. Roosevelt is inex- 
plicable. He was a typical and outstanding Amer- 
ican because he did have a vital religious faith and 
a daily practice consistent with it. 

Gladstone near the end of his life said : 

I have been in public life fifty-eight years, and forty- 
seven in the Cabinet of the British government, and during 
these forty-seven years I have been associated with sixty 
of the master minds of the country and all but five were 
Christians. 

All history will show that pure religion builds the 
greatest leaders of earth. To find a truly great man 
is to find a ^an with faith in the Father-God and one 
who has consciously or unconsciously followed the 
program of Jesus. 

American history was made by Christians — and 
this term is not used in a narrow, sectarian sense. 
It is employed in the spirit of the Great Teacher who, 
when the disciples reported that they checked one 
who was "casting out devils" because he "followed 

11 



12 AN EXPLANATION 

not with us" told them, '^Forbid him not, for he 
that is not against us is for us." 

The Pilgrim Fathers began the New England 
colony with prayer. Our first constitutional conven- 
tion at Benjamin Franklin's suggestion, opened its 
sessions with a religious service. Washington of- 
fered petitions in secluded places in the forest. 
Abraham Lincoln sent for Bishop Simpson, that 
they might pray together at critical times. William 
McKinley in his death hour gave a new meaning to 
the forgiveness of enemies. When the Titanic car- 
ried down the brave American men who had sent the 
women away safely in the lifeboats, the band played 
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the ship sank. 

The three generals who led the Allied forces to vic- 
tory were General Foch, a devout Koman Catholic, 
who prayed much daily; General Haig, a faithful 
Presbyterian ; and General Pershing, who was reared 
in the Methodist Church and is now a communicant 
in the Protestant Episcopal Church. All agree that 
there were no atheists in the trenches. 

A careful investigation will show that the great 
men of America are believers in God and in the 
brotherhood of man as exemplified by the Father's 
Son, who came to earth and lived among men. 

Men are not rewarded for their "faith" in an ar- 
bitrary way, but such faith and training develops 
and equips big men and sustains them under strain. 
' The promise was "Seek first the kingdom of God" — 
the rulership of the Christ spirit— and "all things 
shall.be added unto you," and that promise is liter- 
ally fulfilled. 



AN EXPLANATION 13 

Theodore Koosevelt stands out as the towering, 
unquestioned illustration of the size and kind of, 
men pure religion builds. He was strongly human 
and yet devout, admittedly imperfect and yet sin- 
cerely seeking the truth, notably self-confident and 
yet avowedly a worshipful disciple of the humble 
Teacher of Galilee. He went away from earth carry-; 
ing the diploma of a completed life course, and 
hence is a beckoning example to all who would think 
widely, contest successfully, serve steadily, live hap- 
pily, and cross the river at the end triumphantly. 

The words of many witnesses following various 
vocations have been freely and frequently quoted be- 
cause the important subject of religion dare not 
be left either to an author's declarations or even to 
his interpretation of quotations. The evidence pre- 
sented will be recognized as conclusive. 

The author desires to express his appreciation to 
the publishers of the following volumes for their 
courtesy in permitting unusual liberty in quoting 
from Mr. Koosevelt's writings : 

Theodore Roosevelt^ the Man as I Knew Him. By 
Ferdinand C. Iglehart. The Christian Herald, Pub- 
lishers. 

^'BilV Setvairs Story of Theodore Roosevelt, By 
William Wingate Sewall. Harper & Brothers, Pub- 
lishers. 

The Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt. By Herman 
Hagedorn. Harper & Brothers, Publishers. 

Theodore Roosevelt. By William Roscoe Thayer. 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers. 

Theodore Roosevelt, the Logic of His Career. By 



U AN EXPLANATION 

Charles G. Washburn. Houghton MifOin Company, 
Publishers. 

Talks With T. R. By John J. Leary, Jr. Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company, Publishers. 

The Life of Theodore Roosevelt. By William 
Draper Lewis. John C. Winston Company, Pub- 
lishers. 

Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt. By Lawrence 
F. Abbott. Doubleday, Page & Company, Publishers. 

Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the Man. By 
James Morgan. The Macmillan Company, Pub- 
lishers. 

Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. By Jacob Riis. 
The Macmillan Company, Publishers. 

Personal Memoirs of the Home Life of the Late 
Theodore Roosevelt. By Albert Loren Cheney. 
Cheney Publishing Company, Publishers. 

American Ideals and Other Essays. By Theodore 
Roosevelt. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers. 

Roosevelt, His Life Meaning and Messages, Vol. I 
—The Roosevelt Policy. The Current Literature 
Company, Publishers. 

The Many-Sided Roosevelt. By George William 
Douglas. Dodd, Mead & Company, Publishers. 

From the Jungle Through Europe icith Roosevelt. 
By John O'Laughlin. Chappie Publishing Company, 
Ltd., Boston, Publishers. 

RealizaUe 7(Zea?s— The Earl Lectures, delivered 
under the auspices of the Pacific Theological Semi- 
nary. By Theodore Roosevelt. Whitaker & Ray- 
Wiggin Co., Publishers, San Francisco. 



AN EXPLANATION 15 

Theodore Roosevelt as an Undergraduate. By 
Donald Wilhelm. John W. Luce & Co., Publishers, 

While Mr. Koosevelt had a profound and workable 
creed, he seldom talked about or detailed it. Yet he 
lived a very definite one. Theories interested him 
very little; he demanded practice. He agreed with 
James: *'I will show you my faith by my works." 
Nevertheless, he emphasized the necessity of faith 
and worship. New York's children, uninstructed, 
might decide that trees are not necessary to furnish 
fruit; there is such an abundance in the stores. 
One is prone to conclude after reading the many 
high-sounding phrases divorced from any mention 
of God, about "right," "honesty," "service," "the 
Golden Rule," and "morality," that these grew in 
the air or were self-existent entities. These words 
have full meaning only in Christian communities. 
Every ideal with power in it or moral word which 
possesses red blood, grew on the tree called religion. 
Where there is no religion, or God, or church, there 
is no moral practice, progress, or security. Mr. 
Roosevelt said, "A churchless community is a com- 
munity on the rapid downgrade." Again he said, 
"Every sensible man believes in and practices re- 
ligion." 

To take God out of consideration when viewing 
Mr. Roosevelt's life is to mislead the people and 
lessen the permanency of his influence. Without a 
religious training similar to that which he and his 
associates received and followed, there will be no 
leaders of caliber and strength to succeed the pres- 



16 AN EXPLANATION 

ent-day leaders; teachers and parents must realize 
that or fail at their task. The child without a re- 
ligious training is unfitted to meet life's problems 
successfully. 

Eeligion does not consist alone of prayer, Bible 
reading, and church attendance. While necessary 
for ripest development, they are but sunshine, rain, 
and soil which feed the roots of faith and enable the 
character to bear fruit in words and deeds of right- 
eousness. Neither does any religion require humans 
who profess it to be without flaw or periods of 
failure. The orchard is not dug up because it bears 
some scrubby fruit, or even if it fails to produce for 
one whole season. Americanism is often cheapened 
by hypocrites; none of us reach our highest ideals 
as citizens, and yet we do not refrain from profess- 
ing to be an "American" on this account. It is un- 
fair to demand that those who announce themselves 
as pupils in the school of Christ, by professing to 
be Christians, should be flawless. 

This book will review all phases of Mr. Koose- 
velt's life but with the single purpose of exhibiting 
his religious traits. His ordinary faults will be 
taken for granted. No one will conclude, therefore, 
that he had no temptations or failures or lapses from 
a perfect Christian standard because they are not 
presented. 

His religion is traced back to his childhood, fol- 
lowed in his own home, discovered in his ideals, 
teachings, and activities, and confidently identified 
in his church affiliations and advocacies. The ma- 
terial has been gathered from biographies and arti- 



AN EXPLANATION 17 

cles, the writings and addresses of Mr. Roosevelt 
and from interviews with such high authorities as 
Mrs. Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, the Hon. Oscar 
Straus, Dr. Lyman Abbott, General Leonard Wood, 
President Nicholas Murray Butler, Gifford Pinchot, 
W. Emlen Roosevelt (his cousin), William Loeb, 
Mr. McGrath, Dr. Alex. Lambert, ''Bill" Sewall, 
H. L. Stoddard, A. G. Van Valkenburg, and Major 
George Haven Putnam. 

Mr. Roosevelt was reared in a deeply religious^ 
home and gave his children a similar training. He 
joined the church at sixteen and attended regularly. 
He was a close student of the Bible, chose religious ^ 
men as associates, and accepted many of the ''mys- 
tical" elements of religion. He said, "I have had 
to deliver a good many lay sermons." And Bruce 
Barton wrote: "Why was it that with all his 
faults we loved Theodore Roosevelt so well? He 
preached at us disturbingly, but he practiced what 
he preached." Mr. Morley said of him, "He has 
many of Napoleon's qualities: indomitable courage, 
tireless perseverance, great capacity for leadership, 
and one thing that Napoleon never had — high moral 
purpose." He had ideals of duty and lived and en- 
forced them. He was pure in heart, mind, and 
tongue and reverent always; he never even took 
God's name in vain. He asserted that "Every man 
who is a Christian should join some church." He de- 
fended and supported both foreign and home mis- , 
sions. 

He obeyed Paul's injunction, "Redeeming the 
time" (Eph. 5. 16). This is translated by some 



18 AN EXPLANATION 

"buying up opportunity/' or, as Moffatt translates it, 
"Make the very most of your time." He never wasted 
a moment. For example, every day after tramping 
and hunting in Africa, though very weary, with 
dogged persistence he wrote his articles for Scrib- 
ners and dispatched them by three different "run- 
ners," so that at least one would get through. He 
always forged straight forward, following "his 
lights," though at times he walked almost alone. He 
literally had the more "abundant life" promised be- 
lievers. He fearlessly and buoyantly met the issue 
of every day and lived it full, allowing the next to 
take care of itself. He indeed appropriated the 
words written by Victor Hugo : 

"Let us be like the bird 

New lighted on a twig that swings: 
He feels its sway but sings on unaffrighted, 
Knowing he has his wings." 



0^Q^^tA^^ 



CHAPTER I 
THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 

"Then papa and I went for a long roam in the woods and 
had Sunday school in them. I drew a church, and I am 
now going to bed." — Theodore Roosevelt. 



Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he 
is old, he will not depart from it. — Prov. '22. 6. 

MR. ROOSEVELT'S mixed ancestry made him 
a notable illustration of a distinctive 
Christian doctrine — namely, the common 
brotherhood of all humanity. And he never forgot 
that suggestive fact. His paternal ancestor came to 
America as a steerage passenger in 1644 from Hol- 
land. He found in the environs of New York four 
hundred or five hundred people who spoke eighteen 
different languages : already the land was cosmopoli- 
tan. After that for seven generations every son was 
born on Manhattan Island. Mr. Roosevelt frequently 
recalled the fact that many nationalities were 
merged in him. He once said: 

I myself represent an instance of fusion of several dif- 
ferent stocks, my blood most largely Lowland Scotch, next 
to that Dutch, with a strain of French Huguenot and of 
Gaelic, my ancestors having been here for the most part 
of two centuries. My Dutch forebears kept their blood 
practically unmixed until the days of my grandfather, and 
his father was the first in the line to use English as the 
invariable home tongue. 

19 



20 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

His ancestors set him an example of public serv- 
ice. A great-uncle of Roosevelt, Nicholas J., shared 
with Fulton the honor of developing the steamboat. 
Two ancestors were aldermen in the New York Dutch 
Village of early days and legislated to open the 
street which bears their name. Another, Isaac 
Roosevelt, sat in the constitutional convention with 
Alexander Hamilton. A Roosevelt started one of the 
first banks in New York and was its president. 

From his mother's side he had Welsh, Irish, and 
German blood. Her forebears came to Pennsylvania 
with William Penn, though she herself was born in 
Georgia. 

Mr. Roosevelt himself testifies to the remarkable 
influence of his Christian father when he tells us 
that very early the children were taught that girls 
and boys must have the "same standard of clean liv- 
ing," for what was wrong for a woman was equally 
culpable for a man. In his Pacific Theological Lec- 
tures he says : "If the man preaches and practices a 
different code of morality for himself than that 
which he demands his wife shall practice ... he 
is fundamentally a bad citizen." 

In writing to Edward S. Martin on November 20, 
1920, Mr. Roosevelt emphasized the masculinity of 
his father, together with the tenderness and purity 
of his nature. He recalled the fact that while his 
father recognized him to be a sickly and timid boy, 
he did not coddle him but trained him to hold his 
own with older boys and to be ready to do some of 
the rough work of the world. His father insisted 
that if he were "decent" and manly at the same time, 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 21 

the respect for his manliness would keep others 
from ridiculing his decency. The teaching and char- 
acter of his father created such a love and respect 
that he says, "I would have hated and dreaded be- 
yond measure to have him know that I had been 
guilty of a lie, or of cruelty, or of bullying or of un- 
cleanness or of cowardice." 

Mr. Roosevelt's father had a character which 
commanded a righteous respect. He administered 
corporal punishment only once to Theodore, who 
had bitten his sister Anna's arm. He hid first m 
the yard and then under the kitchen table, hoping 
thus to avoid the punishment he knew was merited. 
His father followed him on all fours under the table. 
The culprit rushed out, flung at his father a handful 
of dough which he grabbed off the table, and ran 
for the stairs. But here he was intercepted and re- 
ceived a punishment which he ^^remembered." 

Mr. Roosevelt summed up his whole estimate of 
his father in the words, ^^My father, Theodore Roose- 
velt, was the best man I ever knew." His father had 
a remarkable influence on him. Some of Theodore's 
firm traits and activities are, therefore, understood 
when one reviews the father's life. 

The Rev. Dr. James M. Ludlow, who was the 
senior Roosevelt's pastor for several years, told me; 
Mr Roosevelt, Sr., was a very companionable man. He 
was naturally aristocratic but never snobbish. Mrs. Roose- 
velt was dignified and retiring, but a very sweet woman 
who always won her way. The sister, Miss Gracey, was 
much like her. Mr. Roosevelt was always very active in 
movements for reform. He was passionate in his attacks 
on evil He exhibited an easy control except when some 



22 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

notable wrong was called to his attention. He then became 
a bundle of wrath. He was a prophet of righteousness, 
and he would not mince matters in going after sinners 
high or low. His son constantly reminded me of him in 
this respect. 

Mr. Roosevelt was very loyal to the memory of his 
father. His uncle, R. B. Roosevelt, was nominated 
as a Presidential elector by the Democrats, to which 
party he belonged, but he declined to serve, out of 
regard for his nephew, who was at that time the Re- 
publican candidate. Later he was President Roose- 
velt's guest at his inaugural, and on his return he 
received a letter from the President, expressing per- 
sonal gratification that the uncle had attended the 
inauguration, both for his own sake and also be- 
cause he so vividly reminded him of his own father. 
He showed that the presence of his father was 
never forgotten, for he wrote, "How I wish father 
could have lived to see it too!" 

Theodore, Sr., was normally a Republican, but he 
could not stand the rule of the bosses who collected 
from the corporations and refused to walk uprightly, 
and he arraigned them vigorously. President Hayes 
admired his independence and nominated him for 
collector of the Port of New York, but the bosses, un- 
willing to see the highest Federal office in the gift of 
the state held by a man they could not control, kept 
the Senate from confirming him, and so he never 
filled the office. 

His father did not enter the Civil War as an actual 
fighter, though he was a Lincoln Republican and 
heartily backed the Ujiion. He had married a woman 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 23 

heartily in sympathy with the Confederacy and was 
therefore compelled to exercise rare powers of con- 
ciliation and charity. This situation also provi- 
dentially prepared the son to merge the North and 
South together. He nevertheless rendered priceless 
aid to the Union cause, so that in spite of a divided 
home concerning the war, Theodore grew up in a 
"loyal" household. 

His activities were so eminently ''social" that their 
influence is recognized in the son's ideals. Mr. 
Koosevelt, Sr., proposed and carried to success 
State and national legislation to enable the soldiers 
to allot part of their salaries to their families so 
that it would be paid directly to them. He traveled 
and talked and finally lived for three months in 
Washington to get the bill passed. Congressmen in 
those days could not understand how any man should 
desire legislation without a selfish purpose, and for 
a time they watched him suspiciously. But his high 
standing finally removed that suspicion. He was 
appointed one of the New York State Commission- 
ers and visited the various camps in the State, riding 
six or eight hours a day on horseback to do so. He 
then stood in the snow and slush pleading with the 
soldiers to sign over some of their pay to their starv- 
ing families. He often found the soldiers hardened 
into utter listlessness concerning home folk, but he 
urged in mass meeting and by individual appeal 
until he secured their signatures. The sutlers, who 
wanted to get the soldiers' money for rum, opposed 
him persistently. Theodore, Junior, imbibed an in- 
tense patriotism, for his father worked with the 



24 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"Loyal Publication Society," which scattered in- 
formation about the causes of the war and the right- 
eousness of the Union's side. It was badly needed 
in New York, not always loyal in those days. He 
was one of the first members of the Union League 
Club, which club aided in raising and equipping the 
first Negro regiment. 

War charity, as usual, led to vast waste ; he initi- 
ated methods to systematize the expenditures and 
reduce the waste. He called conferences of Jews, 
Catholics, and Protestants, and finally succeeded in 
organizing a city and then a State Board of Charities 
and became its first president. 

He was also an active worker on the Advisory 
Board of the Woman's Central Association of Re- 
lief, formed in Cooper Union the latter part of 
April, 1861, to furnish supplies and nurses to weak, 
sick, and injured soldiers. This grew into the Sani- 
tary Commission and ultimately into the American 
Red Cross. 

Then too he did much to aid the unemployed and 
unprotected soldiers in their attempt to get started 
in civilian life. 

Thousands of soldiers had drifted into New York 
city and could find no way to support themselves. 
He organized in his own home the "Soldiers' Employ- 
ment Bureau." This bureau also aided crippled 
soldiers to find fitting vocations. Many of these 
soldiers had not received their salaries from the gov- 
ernment, and grafting agents were buying their 
claims and exacting heavy fees. For their protection 
he helped form the "Protective War Claims Asso- 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 25 

elation/' which aided the soldiers without charge 
and saved them over one million dollars in fees. 

He was particularly interested in preventing 
cruelty to children and to animals and encouraged 
various organizations working along these lines. He 
gave much time to the Newsboys' Lodging Houses, 
which were effective in keeping the boys off the street, 
where they were prone to learn criminal-making 
habits. Every Sunday evening he spent at one of 
these homes. One orphan boy picked up on the street 
was located on a Western farm with foster parents 
by Mr. Roosevelt, Sr. The lad, afterward grown 
into unusual ability, greeted President Roosevelt as 
Governor Brady, of Alaska, and told him of the 
father's helpfulness. 

The Rev. Dr. Ludlow recounted a characteristic 
incident of the father to the writer, that reminds 
one of the President: 

A distinguished group of men was being entertained at 
dinner by Mr. Roosevelt, the father, and I was included as 
his pastor. He was very orderly and observant of all the 
nicest customs on such an occasion. His servants were 
well trained, his bearing was that of an old-school gentle- 
man, and he was very punctilious about such a dignified 
dinner. The butler with much hesitation appeared and 
whispered to the host. Mr. Roosevelt grew red in the face 
but stopped the dinner service and asked to be excused. In 
about ten minutes he returned and proposed to tell us why 
he left. We assured him that it was not necessary but he 
insisted. He said: "You know I am interested in the news- 
boys' home. I told the boys that if they had any trouble 
In getting ready for Christmas to come up and see me. 
I overheard one lad say: 'He's just kidding you. That 
bloke wouldn't see you at his fine home.' Well, one of the 



26 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

boys came a few moments ago. Though I never leave a din- 
ner party, I had to do so for these lads. I could, if neces- 
sary, lose your respect, but I must not lose my grip on 
these boys." 

George Haven Putnam declares : ^'It was to the 
initiative and unselfish cooperation of Theodore's 
father and uncle that the city owes the Roosevelt 
Hospital." 

Mrs. Robinson talked to me about Mr. Roosevelt, 
Sr., and his good-Samaritan work and teaching : 

My sister Anna (afterward Mrs. Cowles, the wife of the 
Admiral) suffered from spinal trouble. There was then 
little hope for one thus afflicted. Usually the patients must 
lie still in bed until frequently they lost the use of their 
limbs. But father became interested in a young doctor, 
Charles Fayette Taylor, who proposed the modern treatment 
with braces. Father tried to found a hospital for this kind 
of treatment but failed to secure financial support, until he 
gave a reception at our home. He had the little sufferers 
brought and laid on the dining room table so that the 
braces could be seen and the curative effects be established. 
My father placed me by the table to show and explain the 
method. Mrs. John Jacob Astor was thus convinced and 
promised aid. Others did the same. And thus my father 
was able to get the first orthopaedic hospital started. 

The suffering of his own child gave him such sym- 
pathy for others that he opened the door of help to 
the afflicted ones. 

He further aided a movement to provide quarters 
for lunatics in city hospitals, and another to secure 
systematic care for dependent orphans and delin- 
quent children, and others to provide for decent care 
for vagrants and protective tenement-house laws. 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 27 

He was indeed "full" of good works. He was also a 
loyal and hopeful supporter of the Y. M. C. A. All 
of these movements he explained to Theodore, Jr., 
for the boy was his close associate and often accom- 
panied him to the meetings and missions where the 
various subjects were discussed. Such a life of help- 
fulness, backed by an earnest Christian faith, could 
not fail to impress the son. It was not to be wondered 
that the "son" later fathered the "Progressive" party 
social program. 

The father died while still in his prime at forty- 
six; Theodore was only nineteen. A eulogy at the 
time described him as a "man of untiring energy 
and of prodigious industry, the most valiant fighter 
of his day for the right, and the winner of his fights. 
He was a tireless helper of the helpless." A set of 
resolutions adopted by the Union League Club said : 
"His life was a stirring summons to the men of 
wealth, of culture, and of leisure in the community 
to a more active participation in public affairs." 

Mr. Roosevelt said that his mother was "a sweet, 
gracious, beautiful Southern woman, a delightful 
companion and beloved by everybody. She was en- 
tirely 'unreconstructed' to the day of her death." She 
was never reconciled to the defeat of the Confed- 
eracy. 

Her father's house was in the line of Sherman's 
march to the sea, and everything portable was car- 
ried away. While he was in the White House an old 
soldier sent Mr. Roosevelt a book which had been 
taken from the grandfather's library during that 
raid. 



28 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Theodore early understood the divided loyalty in 
his home during the Civil War and recalled a time 
when he aroused his mother by praying for the suc- 
cess of the Union. He describes the incident when 
"I attempted a partial vengeance by praying with 
loud fervor for the success of the Union armies when 
we all came to say our prayers before my mother in 
the evening." His mother, while loyal to the cause, 
also had a strong sense of humor and did not punish 
him, but warned him that the next time his father 
would be informed and that meant serious punish- 
ment; he did not repeat the offense. The ''father'' 
felt keenly his wife's attitude but was lovingly pa- 
tient about it and illustrated to his children the 
possibility of harmony amidst diverse views. 

The old-fashioned home out of which have come the 
stalwart soldiers of righteousness and the prophetic 
leaders in America had in it a definite worship of a 
personal God. The modern home without a vital 
religion in it is much less influential than the old 
kind, even if its theological conceptions were some- 
what crude. 

Mrs. Robinson in a happy interview described the 
joyful "family prayer" hour which was observed : 

Father always had family prayer just before breakfast 
every morning. It was a joy to us all and never a burden. 
He would call cheerily, "Come to prayers." Each one of 
the children would then endeavor to be the first one to call 
out, "I speak for you and the cubby hole too." The first 
one to call this secured the seat of honor, which was lo- 
cated between the head of the old-fashioned sofa and 
father. Here he or she sat while he read the morning les- 
son from the Bible. He had a religion of brightness and 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 29 

gayety. It gave cheer. It was never black nor did it have 
any sympathy with depressing and fearful forebodings. In 
fact, father attended Dr. Adams' church in the early days 
because he preached a God of love; he talked much about 
heaven and omitted the current doctrine of hell. He de- 
scribed a Christ who came to make mankind happy. God 
was very real and near to my father. 

The spiritual life was a very normal thing in this 
home. Bible-reading was a regular and reverential 
practice. Religious questions were treated as any 
others that might come up. Even a Sunday school 
could be held while on a "tramp," as is shown by a 
reference in Theodore's diary quoted by Mr. Hage- 
dorn while touring Europe and during a stop in 
Vienna : "Then papa and I went for a long roam 
through the woods and had Sunday school in them. 
I drew a church and I am now going to bed." 

W. Emlen Roosevelt told me that this intelligent 
interest in the Bible began with Theodore's grand- 
father : 

I can vividly remember our (Theodore's and my) grand- 
father. He too had retired from business. In his later 
years he did not attend church very regularly but spent 
much time in his room alone with the Bible. He would 
talk with various types of people about Scripture passages. 
He read religious papers and was constantly studying re- 
ligion in its broader aspects. 

Theodore'fi father made it a practice to set apart 
one day every week to be spent in visiting and cheer- 
ing the poor and less fortunate. He would normally 
allow no day to pass without some act of kindness 
to his credit. He withdrew more and more from 



30 KOOSEVELT'S EELIGION 

business until he was entirely out of it so that he 
could and did give all of his time to helping folks. 
Theodore said of his father : 

I remember seeing him going down Broadway, staid and 
respectable business man as he was, with a poor little sick 
kitten in his pocket, a waif which he had picked up in the 
street. 

Mrs. Robinson told me about her father's success 
in distributing tracts : 

My father took great satisfaction in circulating tracts 
or pamphlets on religious subjects. They were much in 
vogue in that day. He would follow them up. I recall a 
case where he persuaded a boy to read one of these tracts. 
He then followed it up with a call on the boy, who lived in 
an obscure tenement house. Father saw that the boy had 
read the tract to his mother. He then talked with the 
family about religion and persuaded the whole family to 
attend church, and they became regular too. 

The animal spirits of childhood were guided, not 
suppressed, and so goodness was nurtured by a happy 
home life. In the winter time the Roosevelt family 
lived at 28 East Twentieth Street. The old home is 
now being restored to its original condition by an 
organization of patriotic women. In the summer the 
whole family went to the country, where they had as 
pets cats, dogs, rabbits, a raccoon, and a Shetland 
pony called "General Grant," for whom the Presi- 
dent's Children thirty years afterward named their 
pony. On Christmas Eve each child borrowed the 
largest stocking in the house and hung it near the 
chimney. Early next morning they trooped into 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 31 

their parents' room and emptied their stockings on 
the bed. After breakfast the larger presents were 
viewed in the drawing room. Mr. Roosevelt once 
said, "I never knew anyone else have what seemed to 
me such attractive Christmases, and in the next gen- 
eration I tried to reproduce them exactly for my 
own children." 

It was the product of a real Christian home. 

Dr. Ludlow related an incident which explains 
Mr. Roosevelt's early interest in the Police Depart- 
ment, and which enforces the fact that he early found 
the representatives of religion congenial : 

Theodore frequently visited me in my study. One morn- 
ing, when he was about sixteen, a woman asked me to call 
on her dying mother. When I proposed going immediately, 
she urged delay until three p. m. That aroused suspicion 
that there was a frame-up to blackmail me, and so I asked 
Theodore if he would accompany me, and we made the 
call at once. There was no sickness. The people were 
crooked and hoped to extort money. When Theodore 
learned this fact, he said, "1 wish I were a policeman, so 
that I could hit this." While President he told Governor 
Fort that this first gave him a desire to enter the Police 
Department, which bore full fruit when he accepted the 
commissionership. Even as a boy he was tremendously 
energetic when answering a call of duty. 

It is related that Theodore's father was once con- 
gratulated by his pastor upon the meaning of his 
son's name — ''gift of God." "Suppose we change it 
a little, and call it a gift to God?" said the father. 
He accepted fatherhood as a serious responsibility. 

Mrs. Robinson recalled for me the home customs 
which gave religious training to the children: 



32 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Each child bowed at mother's knee to say the "Now I 
lay me" prayer and the "Our Father." My grandmother 
Bulloch was also at our house during a part of our child- 
hood and joined "Aunt Gracey" in giving us religious train- 
ing. Aunt Gracey started to teach Theodore his letters at 
three years of age and at the same time led him to begin 
memorizing hymns and psalms. Our father went farther 
and taught us the meaning of various verses in the Bible. 
At the five o'clock Sunday hour [detailed in another chap- 
ter] we described the sermon we had heard in the morning. 
This helped us to listen for the purpose of repeating, to 
seek the best method of expression, and to love the Bible. 
We each read aloud out of our own Bible. What our father 
there taught us was worked into our life afterward. 

The first notable book which impressed and in- 
fluenced Theodore as a little lad was Livingstone's 
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, 
This account of the courageous apostle of Christ 
who was a naturalist and a missionary and explorer 
in Africa, and who was found by Henry M. Stanley, 
and who later died on the shore of Lake Bangweolo, 
having slipped away while on his knees in prayer, 
awakened Theodore's imagination and lifted his 
ideals. His sisters delighted in telling how he went 
about carrying a big volume of Livingstone's works, 
asking everyone he met to explain to him about 
^'foraging ants." Finally the little fellow attracted 
attention, and they found that Livingstone had re- 
ferred merely to "foregoing ants." 

He evidently was guided in his reading, for he 
paid high praise to the influence of a certain periodi- 
cal called "Our Young Folks," which he said "in- 
stilled the individual virtues" and enforced the fact 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 33 

that "character" was the chief requisite for success. 
He then affirmed that all the modern moralizations 
and the wisdom of men could not change this fact, 
for a worthy citizen, above everything else, must 
have the right traits in himself, such as "self-reli- 
ance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his 
own rights, and the sympathy which makes him 
regardful of the rights of others." This, he said, he 
was taught by his reading at home and at Harvard. 

Mr. Roosevelt, Sr., regularly attended, during the 
holiday season, a dinner at the Newsboys' Lodging 
House and often Miss Satterj^'s Night School for 
Little Italians. He took Theodore and the other 
children to these meetings and to various Christian 
missions, and required them to help in a hearty way 
that might remove any air of superiority. These 
associations gave them an intimate view of the poor, 
which, when added to their knowledge of the rich, 
gave them breadth. 

Theodore's father always taught a class in a mis- 
sion Sunday school. On the way to this work he 
would stop and leave his own children at the Sunday 
school connected with Dr. Adams' Presbyterian 
Church on Madison Square. Afterward this church 
had as pastor the vigorous opponent of Tammany, 
Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst. 

Roosevelt gave his father's example as the occasion 
for his own activity as a Sunday-school teacher in 
a Mission where he worked for three years until go- 
ing to Harvard. In Cambridge he first taught a 
class in an Episcopal and then in a Congregational 
school. He declared, "I do not think I made much of 



34 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

a success of the 7 years work." But this he admitted 
was disproved when he recognized a Taxi driver as 
a former member of his class who informed him that 
he ^'was an ardent Bull Mooser." 

Piety and activity in the church during the days of 
Mr. Roosevelt's youth were only expected of the ef- 
feminate or those anticipating an early death. He 
probably noticed this feeling, for he remembered 
the conditions then prevalent as late as 1900, when 
he explained that it was uncommon for college men 
in his day to teach a Sunday-school class. They also 
looked down upon one who did, so he determined to 
offset this false estimate by being a ^'corking" boxer, 
a good runner, and a genial member of the Porcelain 
Club. He affirmed that while he enjoyed them as 
sports, yet his deepest purpose was to be so furnished 
that no one should ''laugh at me with impunity be- 
cause I was decent." 

Jacob A. Riis relates that one Sunday while at 
Harvard Theodore noticed that a boy in his Sunday- 
school class had a black eye. On inquiring he found 
that the lad had received it in giving punishment to 
a boy who had been ugly to his sister. Mr. Roosevelt 
commended him and gave him a dollar bill as a re- 
ward. The minister of the church reproved the 
teacher for thus encouraging fighting and asked for 
his resignation. He acquiesced, but, like a good 
soldier and unlike some weak slackers in church work 
who would have relaxed into idleness with ''hurt" 
feelings, Theodore went to another church and there 
asked for and taught another class. 

Mr. Roosevelt put high value on the training he 



THEODORE'S CHILDHOOD HOME 35 

received in his own home, for he affirmed, "I left 
college and entered the big world, owing more than 
I can express to the training I had received, espe- 
cially in my home.'' 

Mr. Thayer, who was his schoolmate and close 
friend at Harvard and later his biographer, also 
testified to the moral stability thus insured : 

The quiet but firm teaching of his parents bore fruit in 
him- he came to college with a body of rational moral 
principles which he made no parade of. but obeyed in- 
stinctively. And so, where many young fellows are thrown 
off their balance on first acquiring the freedom which col- 
lege life gives or are dazed and distracted on first hearing 
the babel of strange philosophies or novel doctrines, he 
walked straight, held himself erect, and was not fooled 
into mistaking novelty for truth, or libertinism for man- 
liness. 

Dean Lewis wrote me : ^'Unquestionably his adult 
ideals were essentially the ideals of his mother and 

father." 

Dr. Alexander Lambert, who while his physician 
for twenty years was also his intimate friend, and 
who himself is a member of the Brick Presbyterian 
Church, New York, said to me: 

Theodore received his ideals from his father, who was a 
deeply religious man. His father transmitted to him the 
full Christian doctrine of righteousness, and Theodore 
followed it through his whole life in word and deed. 

Mrs. Kobinson affirmed her father to be an in- 
spired man in his influence on Theodore : 

My father was more than a religious man, he was an in- 



36 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

spired man. He gave my brother all the big things of his 
character and added to that the inculcation of a patient 
persistency built on absolute confidence in the outcome. 

In an address at the old home site she said : 

When this home has been restored I will place in the 
bedroom the suite which my father and mother used. Into 
this room my brother came every night to say his prayers 
at my mother's knee. 

Then she added : '^Those of you who have helped to 
restore this home will some day be as proud of it as 
were those in later years who helped restore Mount 
Vernon." 

Why will they be proud ? Because it is to be made 
a center of Americanization work. That will nat- 
urally lead to recollections of the methods employed 
to build this towering American. Then they must 
remember that those methods were inseparably 
wrapped up in a Christian home, and that every 
night the boy came into the bedroom to say his 
prayers at his mother's knee, and that every morning 
the family gathered for "prayers," and that the 
Bible and church attendance were never neglected in 
that household. 

Religious education is indispensable to the build- 
ing of such Americans as Theodore Roosevelt. 



CHAPTER II 
HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 

"I ask you men and women to act in all relations of 
life ... as you hope to see your sons and daughters act 
if you have brought them up rightly." — Theodore Roosevelt. 



For I know him that he will command his children and 
his household after him, and they shall keep the way of 
the Lord.— Gen. 18. 19. 

MB. ROOSEVELT'S Letters to His Children 
alone present conclusive evidence of an ideal 
and Christian home life. The Rev. C. L. 
Slattery, D.D., rector of Grace Church, New York, 



These letters reveal a beautiful picture of American 
family life at its best. For parents who think themselves 
too busy (chiefly with their own pleasure) to give any 
special attention to their children, delegating them unin- 
terruptedly to nurses, governesses, and schoolmasters, it 
must be startling to read what the most active President 
of the United States was able to do for and with his chil- 
dren while he lived in the White House. 

Mr. Roosevelt did not rear his children amidst 
soft splendor but in the atmosphere of Christian sim- 
plicity and sturdy hardihood. This furnished a good 
foundation for a sane religious training. The 
house in which Mr. Roosevelt lived stood on a hill 

37 



38 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

near Oyster Bay overlooking Long Island Sound, 
and was surrounded by a farm of eighty acres. 
The trees were cleared in front of the house, 
thus giving a fine view of the water, while 
they were otherwise thick enough to shut off 
neighboring houses and thus give privacy. Through- 
out the interior easy-chairs and couches invited re- 
pose. The large living room was filled with trophies 
of his hunting trips. No worry or friction disturbed 
the restfulness of its harmony. He broke the mo- 
notony and kept his body sturdy by long rides on the 
country roads, chopped trees, or tramped through 
woods, or raced or romped with the children in the 
cleared space. While never a rich man, yet his in- 
come in later life would easily have secured a more 
imposing and commodious house and grounds; but 
he made few changes. He early found the secret of 
contentment in simplicity of life, and that added to 
a household in which pure love and sympathy 
reigned while God was worshiped and reverenced, 
made a very happy home. 

When he came into the White House, Mr. Roose- 
velt warned the newspaper men that they must not 
infringe on the privacy of his home by mentioning 
Mrs. Roosevelt or any intimate home details in their 
articles. The correspondent not observing this re- 
quest was told that he would not receive any of the 
President's communications nor would he or any 
other representative of that paper be allowed in the 
White House. His family thus escaped an exasperat- 
ing newspaper notoriety, which has spoiled so many 
children. 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 39 

One daily paper broke this rule in a most irritating 
manner. It is reported that the Eoosevelt children 
had amused themselves by chasing a turkey over the 
White House grounds with a hatchet and finally 
killed it. The story was doubtless fathered by one 
of his enemies who hoped to picture the episode as 
a natural outcome of electing a President with a 
Wild West record. The President was furious at 
the implication that he could be such a cruel father 
and poor sportsman as to teach or permit his chil- 
dren to enjoy such a barbarous pastime. The re- 
porter who invented the tale and all other repre- 
sentatives of that paper were permanently shut out 
from the White House. 

The warm and delightful home life experienced by 
Mr. Roosevelt is only possible where Christ's rules 
are followed. Mrs. Roosevelt was an ideal home- 
maker, markedly domestic, and notably religious. 
She was a woman of rare judgment, whose advice 
her husband sought and usually followed. He once 
said to Mr. Stoddard: "When I go against Mrs. 
Roosevelt's judgment, I usually go wrong. You 
know I never make an important move without first 
consulting her." 

Writing Kermit in November, 1904, Mr. Roosevelt 
recounted the fact that he was very "proud and 
happy" over the "day of greatest triumph I ever had," 
which referred to his election as President. He then 
explains his satisfaction that during the time when 
his election seemed in doubt he was comforted by 
the fact that "the really important thing was the 
lovely life I have with mother and you children, 



40 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

and that compared to this home life everything else 
was of very small importance from the standpoint 
of happiness." 

He steadily hoped that the day might come when 
public duties would allow him to enjoy his home un- 
disturbed. In 1910 when some charged that he 
craved the limelight he wrote William Allen White 
that he craved the quiet of his home where he had 
just spent five of the happiest weeks he had enjoyed 
in many years in the companionship of Mrs. Roose- 
velt. He had relished "our books and pictures and 
bronzes and big wood fires and horses to ride," and 
the assurance that "the children are doing well." 

A very intimate friend of the family described to 
me the happiness prevalent in the inner circle : 

Mr. Roosevelt invited a great many people to dine with 
him, hut few were really brought into the inner circle. 
There was a clearly defined line between the two. In the 
"family" gatherings there was an exuberance of joy and 
fellowship hard to describe. Only a selected number of 
very intimate friends ever entered into it. 

Mr. Valkenburg, in an editorial said : 

The Colonel's relations with his family were what one 
would expect in a man against whom his bitterest enemies 
(and he had many) never breathed the slightest kind of 
scandal. Those who knew him best were wont to declare 
that he and Mrs. Roosevelt were lovers ever, and both were 
the chums and confidants of their children. With his grand- 
children, Colonel Roosevelt confessed that he was "as big 
a fool as any other American grandfather." He would 
leave a conference to play with little Richard Derby, son 
of his daughter Ethel, or to dandle Ted the Third on his 
knee. 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 41 

Mrs. Clinton, who for many months was his sec- 
retary, and lived in the Oyster Bay home, writes 
that Mr. and Mrs. Koosevelt were very thoughtful 
and considerate of everyone and of each other. 
Their home life was ideal, not a single jar occurring 
while she lived with them. She ate at the table regu- 
larly with them and was treated like one of the 
family. Continuing, she says : 

Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt were in the habit of taking 
a "constitutional" early every morning, walking around 
the wide veranda arm in arm, rain or shine, as merry as 
two children. Colonel Roosevelt was always gentlemanly. 
I never heard him use a harsh or vulgar word. He was 
particularly fond of his children, and would stop in the 
midst of dictation every afternoon at four o'clock and 
leave the room, after which strange noises proceeded from 
the nursery. He was playing bear with baby Quentin on 
the bed. — Personal Memoirs of the Home Life of Theodore 
Roosevelt, Cheney, p. 143. 

Such a home gave the children confidence in the 
teaching of the parents, and created an atmosphere 
which nourished religious truths into healthy 
growth. 

In his Pacific Theological Seminary lectures Mr. 
Koosevelt warns people that there is no substitute 
for home life: 

Nothing else . . . can take the place of family life, and 
family life cannot be really happy unless it is based on 
duty, based on recognition of the great underlying laws of 
religion and morality. 

Continuing, he said : 

Multiplication of divorces means that there is something 



42 ROOSEVELT^S RELIGION 

rotten in the community, that there is some principle of 
evil at work which must be counteracted and overcome or 
widespread disaster will follow. 

He never lost the old-fashioned and safe standards 
taught by the church. 

In a letter to Kermit Mr. Roosevelt describes their 
home life. He notes the fact that he had ^'people 
in to lunch/' but that at dinner the family was 
usually alone. Callers are welcomed in the evening, 
though "I generally have an hour in which to sit 
with mother and the others up in the library, talking 
and reading and watching the bright wood fire." 
The four children, Ted, Archie, Ethel, and Quentin, 
in accordance with long practice, ''are generally in 
mother's room for twenty minutes or half an hour 
just before she dresses." 

In the busiest period of his life he allotted at 
least one half hour a day to his children with fre- 
quent picnics and play times of longer duration. He 
believed that in a Christian home the father had 
home duties just as binding as those of the mother, 
and so in his Pacific Theological Seminary lectures 
he said of the man in the household : 

We continually speak — and it is perfectly proper that we 
should — of the enormous importance of the woman's work 
in the home. It is more important than the man's. She 
does play a greater part. But the man is not to be excused 
if he fails to recognize that his work in the home, in help- 
ing bring up, as well as provide for the children, is also one 
of his primary functions. 

A little later he condemns a too widely current cus- 
tom of pampering children : 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 43 

Too often, among hard-working friends of mine, I have 
known a woman to say, "I've had to work hard all my life, 
and my daughter shall be brought up as a lady" — meaning, 
poor soul, that the daughter shall be brought up to be 
utterly worthless to herself and everyone else. 

He literally practiced what he preached. It will 
be remembered that his son Theodore carried a din- 
ner pail and worked in a mill for a year. He was not 
turning out hothouse products but worthy citizens. 
The same hardy biblical rules were applied to the 
daughter. Mr. W. H. Crook, White House attache 
for many years, describes the occasion when Miss 
Ethel was introduced to society in Washington. He 
recalls the fact that the daughter had been brought 
up in a simple and natural way at Sagamore Hill, 
where she had been the close associate of "two enter- 
prising young brothers and as closely the comrade of 
father and mother." While she had mastered three 
modern languages and was well trained mentally 
as well as being a finished pianist, she was at the 
same time taught in the "art of housekeeping and 
home-making by that best of all teachers, a com- 
petent mother." 

Mr. Roosevelt and his wife, who was Miss 
Edith Kermit Carow, had been childhood playmates 
and neighbors. Her great-grandfather, Benjamin 
Lee, was an Englishman who served in the British 
navy in the Revolutionary War. On one occasion, 
because he disobeyed orders which he thought unjust 
to the prisoners in his care, he was sentenced to be 
shot. His life was spared through the influence of 
a fellow officer, afterward William IV of Great 



44 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Britain. Later he made the United States his home- 
land and rose to be a captain in our navy. Another 
great-grandfather fought at the battle of Bunker 
Hill. Mrs. Roosevelt was also a descendant of 
Jonathan Edwards, the great preacher. She in- 
herited a spiritual nature which, with her warrior 
blood, qualified her to be a good comrade to her 
courageous "preacher" and "moral reformer" hus- 
band. 

Mr. Roosevelt was not backward in developing 
and expressing affection but employed it with his 
dear ones by kiss and caress and written word. In 
a letter to Ethel which he addressed as "Blessedest 
Ethely-Bye" he affirmed that Kermit thought him "a 
little soft because I am so eagerly looking forward 
to the end when I shall see darling j)retty mother, 
my own sweetheart, and the very nicest of all nice 
daughters, you blessed girlie." He might dictate the 
weekly letter to his children while getting shaved, 
but every letter which went to his wife was written 
with his own hand. He was always determined to 
do his part to keep affection's fires burning. 

Mr. Bishop told me that after Quentin's death Mr. 
Roosevelt avoided the name of Quentin in all con- 
versation, for when it was mentioned this tender- 
hearted father would break down and weep. It is 
reliably reported that the morning after Quentin's 
death an old servant went to the barn and found Mr. 
Roosevelt in tears with his arms around the neck of 
the pony his children had ridden. 

He noticed and was interested in household affairs. 
One day he watches Mrs. Roosevelt putting the covers 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 45 

on the house furnishings and scattering moth balls 
preparatory to leaving the Oyster Bay house for the 
winter and writes Kermit telling him that ^'Ethel 
and I insist that she now eyes us both with a pro- 
fessional gaze and secretly wishes she could wrap 
us in a neatly pinned sheet with camphor balls." 

He had the Christian ideal of womanhood. He 
was always a little afraid that the Suffrage move- 
ment, which he favored, not as the moral panacea so 
many proclaimed it to be but as an inherent right 
belonging to women, would lead women away from 
their unique sphere. 

In a letter written in 1908 he affirmed that "the 
indispensable field for the usefulness of woman is 
as the mother of the family." He affirmed "that her 
work in bearing and rearing the children" was more 
important than any man's work, and it was her nor- 
mal special work just as it was the man's special 
work to be the bread-winner and the "soldier who 
will fight for the home." 

Men engaged in strenuous duties and away from 
home all day are prone to depreciate the strain and 
constant toil which is incumbent on the mother at 
home. In an address on "The Dignity of Labor" 
Mr. Roosevelt said : 

The woman who has borne and has reared as they should 
be reared a family of children has in the most emphatic 
manner deserved well of the republic. Her burden has 
been heavy, and she has been able to bear it worthily only 
by the possession of resolution, of good sense, of conscience, 
and of unselfishness; but if she has borne it well, then to 
her shall come the supreme blessing, for in the words of 



46 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

the oldest and greatest of books, "Her children shall rise 
up and call her blessed."^ 

Mr. Loeb called my attention to the fact that in 
no circumstances would Mr. Roosevelt pardon a wife 
beater or wife murderer. He warmly commends a 
very drastic bill enacted in England for the punish- 
ment of those engaged in the white slave traffic. He 
congratulated Mr. White, sponsor of the bill, for its 
drastic penalties which provided "for the flogging 
of male offenders." Referring to the fact that the 
bill had frightened the slavers out of England, he 
says that this was because "their skin is the only un- 
hardened thing" about them. 

He was always righteously indignant against race 
suicide and declares in his Pacific Theological School 
Lectures, ''If you do not believe in your own stock 
enough to wish to see the stock kept up, then you are 
not good Americans." In his letter to George Tre- 
velyan he tells how much he was saddened to find an 
ugly Socialist tract in Sweden containing "an elabo- 
rate appeal to stop having children; the Socialists 
being so bitter in their class hatred as to welcome 
race destruction as a means of slacking it." This 
he accounted a heathen doctrine. 

Mrs. Roosevelt, in her quiet and yet effective way, 
mothered Mr. Roosevelt more than most people knew. 
Major Putnam related an incident to me which 
doubtless revealed her habits as a solicitous wife : 

I was at Oyster Bay for lunch a short time before Theo- 
dore started on his African trip and remarked to Mrs. 



1.4 Square Deal, p. 22. Reprinted by permission of M. A. Donahue & Co. 
Chicago. 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 47 

Roosevelt, "I suppose you are somewhat anxious about Mr. 
Roosevelt traveling among man-eating lions." She replied, 
"I do not doubt that Theodore can manage the lions, but 
I am afraid of the fevers, he is so careless." 

The children of Mr. Roosevelt's household were 
given careful religious instruction and training but 
were at the same time taught to be self-reliant. So 
he says of his offspring : 

I do not want anyone to believe that my little ones are 
brought up to be cowards in this house. If they are struck, 
they are not taught to turn the other cheek. I haven't any 
use for weaklings. I commend gentleness and manliness. 
I want my boys to be strong and gentle. For all my chil- 
dren I vray that they may be healthy and natural. 

Theodore Jr. tells of a time when he took too 
literally instructions concerning self-protection and 
assaulted his little brother, in line with "father's 
instructions to fight anyone who insulted me." 
When Theodore Jr.'s mother, hearing howls in the 
nursery, came up and found Kermit screaming tear- 
fully, Theodore Jr. tells us, "I told her that he had 
insulted me by taking away some of my blocks, so I 
had hit him on the head with a mechanical rabbit." 

In an address on parenthood . he enforced the im- 
portance of home influences: 

Some children will go wrong in spite of the best train- 
ing, and some will go right even where their surroundings 
are most unfortunate. Nevertheless, an immense amount 
depends upon the family training. 

In speaking of the fact that all four of his boys 



48 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

had enlisted, he declared, ^'You cannot bring up boys 
to be eagles and expect them to act like sparrows." 

Mr. Bishop told the writer that one day, while en- 
gaged in collecting and editing Mr. Roosevelt's let- 
ters, he called on him at the hospital, and showing 
him two or three letters which he had written to his 
children, suggested that a special book be published 
containing these letters. Mr. Bishop, continuing, 
said: 

When I came again, he had secured other copies from 
the children themselves, and, convinced that such a book 
might help the homes of America, he decided to sacrifice 
his long-treasured ideal of privacy for his family and 
publish them. He was intensely interested in the selection 
of the letters and told me a short time before he died, "I 
would rather have this book published than anything that 
has ever been written about me." Never a week passed, 
during this man's busy career, without every child absent 
from home receiving a letter from him. 

The book was issued under the title Theodore 
Roosevelt's Letters to His Children^ and nearly 200,- 
000 copies were sold the first year. To read it is to 
be convinced that his home was ideal because he 
translated the term "Christian" into actuality. 

Mr. Roosevelt insisted that there was just the 
proper mixture of "freedom and control" for the 
children in his household. "They were never al- 
lowed to be disobedient or to shirk lessons or work ; 
tliey were encouraged to have all the fun possible." 

"Bill" Sewall told me that Mr. Roosevelt never 
crowded his boys to do things his way. "He gave 
them the truth and allowed them to choose their own 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 49 

way of applying it." The three families of cousins 
lived close together and Mr. Roosevelt tells us that 
they swam, tramped, boated, coasted and "skated in 
winter, and were intimate friends with the cows, 
chickens, pigs and other live-stock" in the summer. 

A sample of a severe reprimand given one of the 
children is shown in a letter to Archie. Quentin and 
three associates, including Charley Taft, had been 
playing for five hours on a rainy day in the White 
House and had "made spit balls and deliberately put 
them on the portraits." The President discovered 
it after Quentin had retired, but pulled him out of 
bed to clean them all off the pictures. The next 
morning the four culprits were summoned and Mr. 
Roosevelt said: "I explained that they had acted 
like boors; that it would have been a disgrace to 
have behaved so in any gentleman's house." Then 
the President decreed that the three associates of 
Quentin should not come to the house again, nor 
any other playmate, until he felt they had been suf- 
ficiently punished, and concludes : "They were four 
very sheepish small boys when I got through with 
them." 

Mr. Henry L. Stoddard, the Editor of the Evening 
Mail, remarked to me : 

I never saw a more wonderful home. Mr. Roosevelt was 
a genuinely component part of it. Everything of moment 
was made a family matter. The table was like a Cabinet 
council. The children were trusted to discuss the most 
important things. He revealed himself fully to his children. 

The children were encouraged to express them- 
selves fully. One day when Archie was getting much 



50 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

praise for bravery and patience in sickness, Quentin, 
then a small lad, was impressed by a contrast he 
saw, and said, ^'If only I had Archie's nature and 
my head, wouldn't it be great?" 

Mr. Roosevelt, while he was a great athlete, was 
constantly sounding warnings against becoming too 
much engrossed in sports, and had no place for them 
except as they improved the physical condition and 
so better equipped one for service to his fellows. He 
writes Kermit that he is glad to learn that he is 
playing football, but "I do not have any special am- 
bition to see you shine overmuch in athletics at 
college," because it will take too much of his time. 
He then affirms that he would rather have his son 
excel in his studies than in athletics but that above 
all else he must ^'show true manliness of character 
than show either intellectual or physical prowess." 
In his 'Tacific" lectures he reminded them, "But I 
wish to remind you that merely having a good time 
will turn to bitter dust." 

The children of all kinds of public men are subject 
to special temptations. Some come from overatten- 
tion and the unusual privileges which such a place 
gives. There are also a certain type of human de- 
mons who find hyenalike delight in working moral 
destruction on the children of conspicuous people. 
Other criminally minded people vent their spleen on 
the children of one they hate. Mr. Roosevelt once 
told his physician. Dr. Lambert : 

You have never sounded the depths of human depravity 
until you see the mail sent to a President and his children. 
Such filth and enmity is Inconceivable. And since the 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 51 

writers maliciously seek to reach the little ones, all the mail 
must be carefully scanned before they see it. 

Much evidence exists to show the high value Mr. 
Koosevelt put on religious education. He said once 
to Dr. Iglehart : 

We must cultivate the mind, but it is not enough only 
to cultivate the mind. With education of mind must go 
the spiritual teaching which will make us turn the trained 
intellect to good account. . . . Education must be educa- 
tion of the heart and conscience no less than of the mind. 

In line with this Theodore Jr. tells us ^' Tilgrim's 
Progress' and the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' we 
knew when very young. When father was dressing 
for dinner he used to teach us poetry." 

Once when Quentin was ill and could not get out 
of bed to say his prayers, his devout French nurse 
knelt in his stead to impress upon him the fact that 
it was not right to say his prayers unless he knelt 
down. Was it accidental that a devout nurse was 
selected ? 

It is very evident from many references to the 
names which the children gave animals that they 
were familiar with people in religious fields. These 
names were in their hero class, or they would not 
have applied them to loved pets. In a letter to E. B. 
Martin Mr. Roosevelt tells him that one of his boys 
had named his guinea pigs after such people as 
'^Bishop Doane, Dr. Johnson, my Dutch Reformed 
pastor, and Father Grady, the local priest, with 
whom the children had scraped a speaking acquain- 
tance." He then tells about a small bear which 



52 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

some political friends from West Virginia had sent 
him "which the children of their own accord chris- 
tened 'Jonathan Edwards,' partly out of compliment 
to their mother's ancestor and partly because they 
thought they detected Calvinistic traits in the bear's 
character." It is natural to presume that they 
knew something about Calvin if they saw his "traits" 
in the bear. 

Kermit told me: 

Father was only strict about one thing on Sunday, and 
that was that we attend church and Sunday school. After 
that we could spend the day as we thought best; he trusted 
our sense of fitness. 

Mr. Roosevelt playfully described a household 
custom w^hich usually permitted the children to ac- 
company their mother to the Episcopal church while 
he went alone to the Dutch Reformed : "But if any 
child misbehaved itself, it was sometimes sent next 
Sunday to church with me," when that particular 
child would walk along with rather strained polite- 
ness, showing that the prescription worked and 
quieted the turbulent spirit. 

The rector of the Protestant Episcopalian church 
at Oyster Bay which the family attended, writing of 
Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward the Sunday school, 
said: 

Of course, the parish has a Sunday school. Looking over 
the old registers, one finds the family represented on the 
roll. Once each year on Christmas Eve the Colonel himself 
spoke to the school, receiving his orange and box of candy 
with the other members of the school and joining heartily 



HIS OWN AN IDEAL HOME 53 

in the singing of our historic carol, doubly dear to us 
henceforth because he loved it. 

But evidently he attended Sunday-school meetings 
and was often depressed by their inefficiency, for 
he says in his Pacific Theological Seminary lectures : 

It has always irritated me when, in whatever capacity, I 
have attended Sunday-school celebrations, to listen to some 
of the speeches made, and especially when I knew some of 
the men making them {Realizable Ideais, page 4). 

Mr. Roosevelt was very proud of the "record" of 
Quentin which General Pershing gave on his death. 
One section read: "He was most courteous in his 
conduct, clean in his private life, and devoted in his 

duty." 

Mr. Roosevelt's constant aim was not alone to 
teach by word but to set an ideal example. His 
highest ambition was to say, "Follow me as I follow 
right." And so he closes his Pacific Theological 
Lectures in Berkeley with the words : 

My plea can be summed up in these words: I ask you 
men and women to act in all the relations of life, in private 
life and in public life, in business, in politics, and m every 
other relation, as you hope to see your sons and daughters 
act if you have brought them up rightly and if you prize 
their good name and good standing among decent men and 
women (Realizahle Ideals, page 154). 

Well could Hon. Charles E. Hughes say concerning 
this home, at a memorial service in the Republican 
Club, New York : 



54 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 



It is with pleasure that we remember the family life of 
this stout-hearted American. ... An ideal husband and 
father, his home was the beautiful abode of all that was 
worthy and true. 



CHAPTER III 
A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 

"It's a mighty bad thing for a boy when he becomes 
afraid to go to his father with his troubles, and it's mighty 
bad for a father when he becomes so busy with other affairs, 
that he has no time for the affairs of his children."— 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
and the heart of the children to their fathers.— ilfaZ. Jf. 6. 

MR. ROOSEVELT believed in the leaven of 
righteousness, and therefore, having built a 
strong Christian character, he utilized it to 
influence his children. To do that like the Great 
Teacher he kept his nature childlike in simplicity 
and gladly fellowshiped with them. 

Kermit said to the writer, ''Father was a tre- 
mendous friend, though, of course, he would not 
brook disobedience." The emphasis was on the word 
"friend." Theodore added : 

All our lives my father treated his sons and daughters 
as companions. When we were not with him he wrote us 
constantly. . . . Father, busy as he was, during the entire 
time we were abroad (during the war) wrote to each of us 
weekly, and when he physically could, in his own hand. 

Mr. Roosevelt tells of frequent walks while he was 
assistant secretary of the navy, when his own chil- 
dren and Leonard Wood with his children accom- 

55 



56 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

panied him. He was much pleased because General 
Wood's son seemed to consider him very patriarchal. 
He explains that he was leading a group of children 
on a hike and came to Rock Creek across which a 
tree had so fallen as to form a bridge. Mr. Roosevelt 
was standing on the log half way across in order 
that he could help the little folks over. Suddenly 
one lively lad caused Mr. Roosevelt to reach so far 
that he overbalanced and fell into the water. Then 
the little Wood boy cried out frantically, '^Oh ! Oh ! 
the father of all the children fell into the creek." 

While he 'Qifted" them he also retained his own 
youth by fellowship with boys and girls, and it 
grieved him if he felt that they were growing away 
from him or no longer had a place for him in their 
play. He wrote Ethel about a group of boys Quen- 
tin had at the White House and showed by his 
letter that he was sincerely grieved because they 
did not deem him young enough to invite him to 
join in their games. He then reminds her of the 
times he joined her playmates in ''hide and seek" in 
the White House and "obstacle races" down the 
hall. 

All great servants of humanity have been lovers 
of children with time in spite of heavy duties to give 
their own offspring. Lincoln's Tad was always with 
him. According to Ida M. Tarbell, when his father 
was in a night conference the boy would lie down on 
the floor at the President's feet and go to sleep. 
When the conference was over Mr. Lincoln would 
pick Tad up and himself undress and put him to bed. 
Washington, deprived of children of his own, adopted 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 57 

several and found richest delight in their company. 
David all but broke his heart over Absalom's dis- 
obedience and defection. 

Theodore Roosevelt was wise in condemning a 
home where childhood finds no welcome, for its in- 
mates lose the spirit of that Kingdom which insures 
their being humble and helpful citizens. If all the 
facts were known, it is probable that at weary hours 
he may have desired to escape from the children. 
Instead, however, he willfully pushed aside crowd- 
ing work, and for his own sake and that of the service 
he desired to render he put himself into a playful 
attitude, and so became one of them, even as he will- 
fully gave himself to exercise. 

Mrs. Robinson said to the writer : 

My brother loved children as naturally as the birds do 
springtime. He took as much pains to help my boys as he 
did his own. He gave them much pleasure and real in- 
tellectual profit. He played with my grandchildren with 
as much enthusiasm as with his children's little ones. 

He had no single strain of hardness or cruelty in 
his make-up but, like his Master, was uniformly 
gentle. That is the reason he was so winsome to 
childhood. Some imagined that his delight in hunt- 
ing marked him as loving to shed blood. Dr. Lam- 
bert, who accompanied him on many hunts, discussed 
that with the writer: 

Mr. Roosevelt never killed game for "sport." One day in 
Colorado we were not able to go hunting but were shut 
in by a snowstorm. Phil Stewart, of Colorado Springs, 
was with us. To tease the President he suddenly said to 



58 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

him, "I believe your habit of never killing game for 'sport' 
is not necessarily an evidence of kindliness of heart but is, 
rather, the sign of a weakness of character." The President 
could not forget the charge even though made in fun, and 
the next day I found him pondering it again. It hurt him 
deeply to have his native kindliness of heart questioned. 
He did, of course, kill all the mountain lions he could find 
because he enjoyed the danger of handling them, and he 
was ridding various regions of destructive beasts. There 
was never the least evidence of cruelty in his hunting." 

Mr. Roosevelt accredited the confidence of chil- 
dren as an asset. It was charged that a man under 
consideration for appointment to a federal judgeship 
in a Western State gambled. A State "leader" 
called on the President and told him that these 
charges greatly distressed the man's family, and 
showed a letter from the candidate's daughter which 
read : "Dear Papa : Why don't you go to the Presi- 
dent and tell him about it? If he sees your face, he 
will never believe those nasty charges." Taking a 
rose from his table the President handed it to his 
caller and said : "I wish that you would send this 
flower to that daughter and tell her I like a young 
girl who has that kind of faith in her father." At 
that moment a note arrived from Attorney-General 
Knox, stating that investigation had found the 
charges to be untrue. After showing the note to the 
State leader, the President sent the candidate's 
nomination to the Senate. 

He saw in children the future leaders and counted 
time given to them as well invested. He counted ap- 
pointments with Ills children as binding as any made 
with adults. The nephews were no more slighted 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 59 

than his own children and had no abnormal fear of 
the President. He was still "Uncle Teddy." One 
afternoon he had forgotten to show up at four 
o'clock, so one of his nephews came in and said : 

"Uncle Teddy, it's after four." 

"So it is," responded Mr. Roosevelt, looking at the clock. 
"Why didn't you call me sooner? One of you boys get my 
rifle." 

Then he turned to his guest and added: "I must ask you 
to excuse me. We'll talk this out some other time. I prom- 
ised the boys I'd go shooting with them after four o'clock, 
and I never keep boys waiting. It's a hard trial for a boy 
to wait."^ 

Mr. Riis described a big Christmas dinner given 
in the Duane Street Newsboys' Lodging House. 

When the superintendent's back was turned, eight of the 
boys, as they took their places at the table, "swiped" an- 
other's pie. Seeing Mr. Riis and mistaking him for Police 
Commissioner Roosevelt, one boy spoke up: "I know you. 
I seen your pitcher in the papers. You're Teddy Roosevelt." 
Immediately the eight pieces of pie mysteriously reap- 
peared in their places. Mr. Roosevelt's supposed presence 
had awakened the boys to be honest. What a tribute to 
his character! 

When he heard this incident he said that no higher 
compliment had ever been paid him. 

In January, 1905, he accompanied nine boys, 
which included three of his own, on a "scramble" 
through Rock Creek Park, Washington. The boys 
insisted on his company and he wrote one of the 
parents : 

iFrom The Life and Meaning of Theodore Roosevelt, by Eugene Thwing, p. 
222. 



60 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

I am really touched at the way in which your children, 
as well as my own, treat me as a friend and playmate. . . . 
I do not think that one of them saw anything incongruous 
in the President's getting as bedaubed with mud as they 
got, or in my wiggling and clambering around jutting rocks, 
through cracks, and up what were really small cliff faces, 
just like the rest of them. 

When one of them surpassed him they would crow 
just as if he were a boy of their own age. 

He never forgot the joyful thrills of his own child- 
hood at Christmas time, and hence was able to make 
a glad time at that season for his own household. 
He wrote of the rapture which the gifts brought : 

I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of 
greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to 
one between the ages of say six and fourteen when the 
library door is thrown open and you walk in to see all the 
gifts like a materialized fairy land, arranged on your special 
table. 

Pity the pauperized heart that would destroy and 
deny the existence of Santa Claus. 

It is probable that while the President was not 
consulted, he nevertheless was not opposed to the 
trip which Algonquin, ''the pony," made to the bed- 
room of Archy when he was sick in the White House. 
The stable boys, feeling certain that a visit with 
the pony would cure the invalid, conspired together 
to smuggle the animal into the basement and into 
the elevator which carried him up to the sickroom 
of the lad. 

The President describes one of Quentin's exploits 
in a letter to Archie. He had caught two snakes at 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF Gl 

Oyster Bay and brought one of them along to Wash- 
ington. En route it had created consternation on 
the train by getting out of its box and into the car 
two or three times. On arriving at home he visited 
a "pet" store, and the owner loaned him three more 
snakes for the day, one large and two small ones. 

Quentin engrossed in his pets came rushing on 
his roller skates into his father's private office where 
the President was conferring with the Attorney Gen- 
eral and deposited the snakes in his father's lap. 
The "boy" problem was more important than any 
other. 

In another letter he tells with great enjoyment 
how Quentin procured a hive of bees for experimen- 
tation. His partner was "a mongrel-looking small 
boy with an Italian name whose father kept a fruit- 
stand." They took the bees up to the school exhibit, 
where some of them got out of the hive and were 
left behind, and "yesterday they at intervals added 
great zest to life in the classroom." 

He writes Ted of his arrival at Oyster Bay for 
the summer. Quentin and his dog Black Jack stay 
close to him while he tries to work. The dog is 
curled up in a chair while the boy keeps talking to 
him so that there is added "an element of harassing 
difficulty to my effort to answer my accumulated 
correspondence." But he does not send the little 
fellow away, but treasures his fellowship. 

At another period he writes Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart 
Phelps Ward that since his daughter is out he is act- 
ing as nurse for two guinea pigs which his daughter 
does not count safe with anyone else, and he con- 



62 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

eludes : ^'I do not intend to have wanton suffering 
inflicted on any creature." 

When a woman visitor at his White House office 
once suggested that his children must be a great 
pleasure to him, he replied with a smile : 

"Pleasure! You would be surprised and perhaps shocked 
if you could see the President of the United States engaged 
in a pillow fight with his children. But those fights are 
the joy of my life." 

One of these fights is described in a letter to Kermit. 
Mrs. Roosevelt had preceded the President up the 
stairs and at the top Archie and Quentin met her 
armed with pillows and warned her not to tell 
'^father." When he reached the top of the stairs 
"they assailed me with shrieks and chuckles of de- 
light and then the pillow fight raged up and down 
the hall." 

It was frequently his custom after his bath to read 
them from Uncle Remus, which task "mother" 
usually performed, but "now and then when I think 
she really must have a holiday from it, I read to 
them myself." And he did it so delightfully that 
the children still recall it as one of life's brightest 
memories. 

Again he writes Kermit a letter which gives a pic- 
ture of the ideal father, keeping young with and 
training his children in fundamental religion. There 
is no substitute for the Bible and hymns. "Mother" 
has gone off for nine days and he is taking her place. 
Each night he spends three fourths of an hour read- 
ing such books as Algonquin Indian Tales or the 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 63 

poetry of Scott and Macaulay. He also reads them 
"each evening from the Bible." He chooses such 
stories as David, Saul, and Jonathan, and they be- 
came so interested that many times the President 
had to read more than a chapter. This distinguished 
father then hears them say their prayers and repeat 
the hymn which was assigned to be committed. If 
the latter is repeated correctly, he gives the "reward 
of a five-cent piece" — in line with Mrs. Roosevelt's 
instructions. He is frequently "disconcerted by the 
fact that they persist in regarding me as a play- 
mate." 

He played a water game called "stage-coach" on 
the float, while in swimming with the children. Dur- 
ing the improvised story told by the grown-up, 
when the word "stage-coach" is mentioned, in the 
indoor game each one gets up and turns around 
and finds a new seat. But instead of tamely do- 
ing this in the water game, the children plunge 
overboard. 

Mr. Roosevelt tells us that then comes a tense 
period. The water is alive with kicking legs and 
bubbles from submerged heads. He must carefully 
count heads that come up to see if they correspond 
"with the number of children who had gone down." 

Nothing builds a faith in God and goodness that 
will withstand the storms of life so successfully as 
a happy childhood. Mr. Roosevelt's "Memories" 
doubtless inspired his efforts in behalf of his own 
children. 

In a letter to Miss Carow, his wife's sister, in 
August, 1903, he describes the celebration of Ethel's 



64 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

birthday, when her only request from him was that 
he should take part in a barn romp : 

Of course, I had not the heart to refuse, but really it 
seems, to put it mildly, rather odd for a stout, elderly 
President to be bouncing over hay ricks in a wild effort to 
get to goal before an active midget of a competitor aged 
nine. 

He further details an amateur theatrical per- 
formance which Lorraine and Ted arranged for 
''Laura Roosevelt's tennis courts." Quentin was 
Cupid, Ted represented George Washington, and 
Cleopatra was impersonated by Lorraine. They 
closed with a song in which a verse was dedicated to 
the President, who then writes: ''I love all these 
children and have great fun with them, and I am 
touched by the way in which they feel that I am their 
special friend, champion, and companion." 

The President frequently went out camping with 
his boys and their selected companions. They would 
roll up in a blanket and sleep on the ground. They 
arose early and were enthusiastic over the meals he 
would prepare. He tells us that "it was of a simple 
character, . . . but they certainly ate in a way that 
showed their words were not uttered in a spirit of 
empty compliment." 

Kermit gave some vivid descriptions of these ex- 
peditions with his father in the Metropolitan Maga- 
zine. 

His father from the start enforced the law of the 
jungle. A group would row across the bay in the 
afternoon to a point of land four or five miles away. 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 65 

They carried food and blankets and cooked their 
supper, usually of bacon and chicken, with fire built 
from driftwood on the beach. Any child who would 
greedily grab or selfishly select his piece of chicken 
was warned that such an act might cut him out of 
the party the next time. After supper they wrapped 
the blankets around themselves and lay down on 
the sand while ^'father" would tell ghost stories. 
''The smallest of us lay within reach of father, where 
we could touch him if the story became too vivid for 
our nerves and we needed the reassuring feel of his 
clothes to bring us back to reality." If there was a 
"haunt" in it which led to seizing a victim, the 
story-teller would illustrate it by seizing the nearest 
child at the opportune moment. After the story they 
would roll up in their blankets, burrow in the sand, 
and sleep. At dawn they arose to gather more wood 
and cook breakfast and prepare to return. On the 
row home they would chant a ballad of a seafaring 
nature which they had learned from their father. 
Such trips occurred three or four times during a 
summer and began when the boys were only six or 
seven and continued until they were grown, and left 
home. When his children held his attention he for- 
got everything else. He genuinely enjoyed and en- 
tered into all their sports. 

Mr. Cheney tells how Scribners once sent a 
stenographer to write a story which Mr. Roosevelt 
had agreed to dictate. Waiting an hour after the 
appointed time, she protested impatiently at his 
failure to keep the appointment, when someone di- 
rected her to the window, where she saw the reason 



66 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

why Mr. Koosevelt had forgotten the appointment. 
He was sliding down the hill on skis with the chil- 
dren. Appearing later, he was very apologetic. 

In all this fellowship with his children he kept his 
own spirit saturated with religion as he did his lungs 
with good air, so that he would build right ideals in 
his children. In a letter to Edith Wharton, Paris, 
he enforced this fact in referring to the death of 
Quentin : 

There is no use of my writing about Quentin, as I should 
break down if I tried. His death is heart-breaking, but 
it would have been far worse if he had lived at the cost of 
the slightest failure to perform his duty.' 

When F. R. Coudert, an old friend of the family, 
returned from France, he met Mr. Roosevelt and was 
greeted as follows: ^'You saw Quentin? It is a 
terrible thing that he will never return. It would 
be a more terrible thing if he had not gone."^ As 
Senator Lodge said : "I cannot say that he sent his 
four sons, because they all went at once, as everyone 
knew that their father's sons would go."^ 

The training received fitted them to hear and 
answer the call of humanity in a prompt and self- 
sacrificing way — life was not held dear when service 
called. The acid test showed them to be sound to 
the core. 

Julian Street describes the way he taught his chil- 
dren the motto, ''Always over or through, never 
around," which made them "good soldiers." When 

•From The Life and Meaning of Theodore Roosevelt, by Eugene Thwing, p. 
200. 

nhid. Hhid. 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 67 

he was governor he would start on a walk with Mrs. 
Roosevelt and the children, and they would under- 
stand that ultimately some physical test would be 
met. The walk would call for sustained effort in 
the face of fatigue ; to cross a difficult field or to 
ford a brook at a treacherous spot, or to go through 
a deep ravine with tangled underbrush. Mr. and 
Mrs. Roosevelt were teaching the children that life 
presents similar obstacles and that ''It is the part 
of good manhood and good womanhood to meet 
squarely and surmount them, going through or over, 
but never around." Thus early they began to learn 
lessons in ''resourcefulness, perseverance, courage, 
stoicism, and disregard for danger." The latter was 
often met. They once came to an almost perpendicu- 
lar clay bank, very difficult to ascend. All succeeded 
except Alice, then a girl of sixteen, who had reached 
the top but could not get down. Elon Hooker, a 
family friend, had accompanied them. He climbed 
a tree and grasping a piece of slate on the bank he 
made a bridge with his arm. When Alice stepped 
on the arm the piece of slate gave way and fell to 
the bottom of the precipice but she caught a limb 
and held on until Mr. Hooker rescued her and 
brought her safely down. They then discovered that 
the mass of slate had struck Mr. Roosevelt on the 
head and made a cut from forehead to rear which 
caused the surgeon to take a dozen stitches ; but there 
was no complaint. 

One of the "cousins" recounted her memories of 
these tramps to Dean Lewis. He had few rules and 
was always just and fair, she said, but expected them 



68 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

to use their reason. "If there was a slip in climbing 
a tree because both hands were not used, home we 
went." It was the same if they fell into a brook. 
"We never regarded this kind of punishment as 
unfair because it taught us to take care of ourselves." 
He was a great favorite as Santa Claus at the vil- 
lage school where his children attended. He always 
demanded his "treat" with the children. Frequently 
he used the occasion to enforce Christian virtues. 
Once he said to them : 

I want you all as you grow up to have a good time. I 
do not think enough of a sour-faced child to spank him. 
And while you are having a good time, work, for you will 
have a good time while you work, if you work the right 
way. If the time ever comes for you to fight, fight, as you 
have worked, for it will he your duty. A coward, you 
know, is several degrees meaner than a liar. Be manly and 
gentle to those weaker than yourselves. Hold your own 
and at the same time do your duty to the weak, and you 
will come pretty near being noble men and women.^ 

His boys went to the public school at Oyster Bay 
through the grammar grades and in Washington and 
did not know any discrimination of class or con- 
dition but accepted all as members of the great 
brotherhood. One of them when asked how he got 
along with the "common" boys in school replied, 
"My father says there are only tall boys and short 
boys and bad boys and good boys, and that's all the 
kinds of boys there are." That teaching will insure 
democracy. 

^Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Theodore Roose 
velt: The Boy and the Man, by James Morgan, p. 284. Copyright, 1907, by 
The Macmillan Company. 



A HELPFUL FATHER HIMSELF 69 

In a commencement address at the ^'Hill School," 
in which many notable men have been prepared for 
college, he enforced the need of earnest righteous- 
ness : 

One of the hardest things to do is to make men under- 
stand that "efficiency in politics does not atone for public 
immorality." 

I believe in happiness, I believe in pleasure — but I do 
not believe you will have any good time at all in life un- 
less the good time comes as an incident of the doing of 
duty — doing some work worth doing. 

Continuing he said: 

In short, to-day, under the auspices of the Civic Club, 
... I preach to you the doctrine that . . . you will amount 
to nothing unless you have ideals, and you will amount to 
nothing unless in good faith you strive to realize them 
(The Outlook, June 9, 1913). 

In an article on ^^Character and Success" in The 
Outlook, March 31, 1900, in discussing a Harvard- 
Yale football game, he repeated with satisfaction 
what a Yale professor had said to him about 
character in a football player : 

I told them not to take him, for he was slack in his 
studies, and my experience is that, as a rule, the man who is 
slack in his studies will be slack in his football work; it 
is character that counts in both. 

He added: 

Between any two contestants, even in college sport or in 
college work, the difference in character on the right side 



70 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the 
other way; it is the character side that will win. 

Dr. Lambert said to the writer: 

The President visited Ted at the Groton School. When 
he left the lad kissed his father good-by. He then told his 
father that the last time he did that he had several fights 
on his hands because the boys teased him about it and he 
had waded into them. Then the President said: "You 
can be just as good and as affectionate in life as you are 
willing to fight for." And he himself taught and illus- 
trated that truth all his life. 

The writer said to Kermit: "If someone should 
say to you, 'How can you prove that your father 
had faith in God?' how would you answer?" In a 
voice a little stiff with indignation he replied: "I 
wouldn't answer it." In further conversation he 
showed that he considered the question an absurd 
one, for to him his father's faith in God seemed very 
evident. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe once said of her father, 
Lyman Beecher, "My father was for so many years 
for me so true an image of the heavenly Father." 
Few can fairly receive that tribute, but every man 
can in his own way strive to be a clean, companion- 
able, inspiring, and high-purposed father striving to 
put the ideals of Jesus into deeds. Theodore Roose- 
velt was preeminently that kind of a father, and 
without the teachings of Jesus and the indwelling 
spirit of God he could not have so nearly approached 
the ideal. 



I 



CHAPTER IV 

PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED FOR HIS 
CAREER 

"God is with the patient if they know how to wait."— 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier. — 
2 Tim. 2. S. 

MR. ROOSEVELT once said : "Fit yourselves 
for the work God has for you to do in this 
world and lose no time about it." He had 
a fearless confidence that his life was immortal until 
his work was done. He accepted every experience as 
a part of the schooling he needed for his tasks. His 
mother once told Mr. Cheney, the editor of the local 
paper, after Theodore had narrowly escaped serious 
injury by being thrown from a colt, "If the Lord had 
not taken care of Theodore as a boy, he would have 
been killed long ago." 

Mrs. Robinson said to the writer, after stressing 
the deep religious nature of her father, "My father 
had a confident prevision of Theodore's future, be- 
lieving deeply in his notable usefulness." 

Riches are a hindrance to the spur that helps suc- 
cess. Carnegie pitied the sons of the wealthy. John 
D. Rockefeller, Jr., envied his father his early pov- 
erty. But Theodore's wealth was turned to his ad- 
vantage, since it gave him a certain independence 

71 



72 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

in action and furnished means to build a sturdy 
body and to secure unusual training. In his day 
many of the sons of the rich were soft and given to 
slothful ease. He believed that God expected every 
man to find a field for strenuous endeavor. He 
finally believed that he was called to enter politics. 
It was then so dominated by bosses and obedient 
henchmen that his high-idealed and independent ac- 
tivities were looked upon as a joke. The New York 
World reported a speech to the City Reform Club 
when he was a candidate for the Legislature as at- 
tended by many other ^^dudes." That paper's report 
continues : 

He closed by upbraiding the dudes, present and absent, 
for not knowing more about politics. . . . When Mr. Roose- 
velt finished, the other dudes took the tops of their canes 
out of their mouths, tapped the floor with the other end 
and threw away their lighted cigarettes. 

In that day it was counted a very effeminate habit 
to smoke cigarettes. 

He accepted inherited wealth as a God-intrusted 
talent for which returns must be made. He insisted, 
therefore, that the freedom from engrossing labor 
which riches insured must be spent in public service. 
Theodore aspired to be a natural history student like 
Audubon, and his father encouraged him and insisted 
that he must be convinced of his desire to do scien- 
tific work and must make it a serious career. His 
father assured Theodore that he ''had made enough 
money to enable me to take up such a career and to 
do non-remunerative work of value." The father 



PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 73 

insisted that it must not be taken up as a dilettante 
but that he must "abandon all thought of enjoyment 
that could accompany a money-making career." 

Even Lis early training seemed providentially 
ordered to fit him for his career. His mother's sister 
and his grandmother were staunch Southerners who, 
much against their will, were compelled to eat the 
Northerner's food, since the Unionists drove them 
out of their own home. They lived with Mr. Roose- 
velt, Sr. Aunt "Gracey" had much to do with the 
training of Teedie, or Theodore, because his own 
mother was frail. He was afterward the first Presi- 
dent outside of those who were likely to be preju- 
diced by actual participation in the Civil War, and 
this unique childhood home helped to save him from 
prejudice against the South. Aunt "Gracey" 
was very devout, and while she taught him his letters 
and related subjects in early childhood, she also gave 
him an earnest training in religion and saturated 
him with psalms and hymns which he committed to 
memory. 

One of the first books read to him by his religious 
home teachers was Pilgrim's Progress, and from 
it he drew his earliest hero, Great-Heart, to whom 
he himself was appropriately likened at death. He 
once said: 

Great-Heart is my favorite character in allegory, just as 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is to my mind one of the 
greatest books that was ever written; and I think that 
Abraham Lincoln is the ideal Great-Heart of public life. 

The great abundance of cartoonists in these days 



74 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

— and they are usually very "raw" — cause us to lose 
sight of their influence. Mr. Roosevelt pays Thomas 
Nast, one of the "first," this tribute : 

When I was a boy I received my first guidance in politics 
through the cartoons of that famous American cartoonist, 
Thomas Nast. His cartoons dramatized for us of that time 
the hideousness of political corruption, . . . indeed, it was 
he who first gave me the feeling of eager championship of 
the army and navy which I have ever since retained.^ 

"Oh, I did not think you could live; you were so 
tiny and frail." So said a neighbor woman concern- 
ing a new-born baby she had laid aside at the moth- 
er's death — feeling confident it would not survive. 
But the puny baby lived and was the Reverend Ly- 
man Beecher, the father of Henry Ward Beecher 
and six other preachers and Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
Theodore Roosevelt was likewise very frail at birth 
and far into his teens. He, like others, built charac- 
ter while patiently battling for health. He recalled 
his father walking the floor with him at night while 
he fights to get his breath. Or as a little fellow he 
would sit up in bed gasping for breath while his 
parents tried to aid him. 

Mrs. Robinson writes of him for Dean Lewis : 

My earliest impressions of my brother Theodore are 
those of a rather small, patient, suffering, little child. . . . 
I can see him now, faithfully going through various exer- 
cises at different times of the day to broaden the chest 
narrowed by this terrible shortness to breath to make the 



^Americariism and Preparedness, by Theodore Roosevelt, p. 122. From 
the Evening Mail, used by pernaisdion. 



J 




Courtesy the New York Times 

"BILL" SEWALL AND A LAD FROM THE ROOSEVELT 
MILITARY ACADEMY 



PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 75 

limbs and back strong and able to bear the weight of what 
was coming later in life. 

Theodore kept a diary from early childhood. He 
recorded continuous spells of sickness and suffering 
never more than a few days apart. Soon after his 
tenth birthday he went abroad and was harassed 
steadily by seasickness in addition to asthma, last- 
ing often for four or five hours at night. He was 
described as a "tall, thin lad with bright eyes and 
legs like pipestems." 

After securing his first gun he found that while 
his companions hit, he invariably missed a mark 
when shooting. He mentioned it to his father, who 
soon bought him his first pair of spectacles, which 
changed the whole world for him. He attributed his 
clumsiness as a boy to the fact that he was ignorant 
of the fact that he could not really see. He after- 
ward said that the memory of his own early suffer- 
ings gave him sympathy for children "unjustly 
blamed for being obstinate or unambitious, or men- 
tally stupid" when they were probably defective. 

He was sent to Moose Head Lake, in Maine, to re- 
lieve one of his unusually severe attacks of asthma. 
While en route on the stage two boys amused them- 
selves by teasing the bespectacled "high brow." He 
finally attempted to fight them, but they handled 
him with humiliating ease. This experience spurred 
him to get strength, and so he came home to use his 
piazza gymnasium strenuously, instead of listlessly. 
He urged his father to add boxing lessons and John 
Long, an ex-prize fighter, was hired for that purpose. 



76 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

And now began the fight that gave him a real 
human body and added to his courage for future 
years, for pure physical valor aids moral courage. 

In addition to physical frailty, he was also timid 
and very retiring, afraid of shadows and trembling 
before cows. His deliverance came from reading 
one of Marryat's books where the captain of a small 
British man of war affirmed, "that almost every man 
is frightened when he goes into action, but that the 
course to follow was for a man to keep such a grip 
on himself that he can act just as if he were not 
frightened." This captain affirmed that ultimately 
pretense would come to reality. Mr. Roosevelt tes- 
tifies that he tried it, and where he was afraid at 
first of everything, ranging from grizzly bears to 
*^mean" horses and gun fighters, he gradually ceased 
to be afraid of anything. 

While a freshman at Harvard, Arthur Cutler, his 
tutor, introduced him to "Bill" Sewall, the Maine 
guide, who became his lifelong friend, and to whom 
Cutler said: 

I want you to take good care of this young fellow. He's 
ambitious and he isn't very strong. He won't say when he's 
tired; he won't complain, but he'll just break down. You 
can't take him on the tramps you take us. 

"Bill" tells us that with the "advice" came a "thin, 
pale youngster, with bad eyes and a weak heart." 
But he was not "such a weakling," for we took one 
walk of twenty-five miles, "a good, fair walk for any 
common man." "He was always good-natured and 
full of fun. I do not ever remember him being 'out 



PKOVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 77 

of sorts.' " He had trained himself to master his 
own spirit. 

Theodore developed and showed his grit on an- 
other walk with "Bill." En route to a lake on the 
Aroostook River, which they waded, Theodore hurt 
his bare foot while wading the river and accidentally 
dropped his shoe, which was swiftly swept away. 
He put on a pair of moccasins as thin as stockings 
and proceeded on a tramp over the rocky mountain 
paths for the whole day, without a murmur. The 
trip was unusually trying, for in providing special 
shoes for the African trip, Kermit explained that 
his father had "skin as tender as a baby's, and he 
therefore took every precaution that his boots should 
fit him properly and not rub." 

His intense concentration began as a child. W. 
Emlen Roosevelt told the writer : "He would read a 
book in his boyhood with such utter absorption that 
no call would affect him, and the only way to attract 
him was to hit him on the back." He literally ob- 
served "This one thing I do." 

His patient persistency was proverbial. While 
hunting in Colorado a dangerous lion sought such 
a refuge that Mr. Roosevelt had his guide let him 
over the precipice by his feet, and his guide says, 
"He killed the lion, hanging head downward, while 
I held him by the feet." He once told Dr. Lyman 
Abbott: "Do you know, I am not a ready writer. 
No one knows how much time I put into my articles 
for The Outlook." 

He had a Christian conception of the power of 
the mind and spirit over the body — a truth as old as 



78 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Jesus and older and long practiced by the "spiritual" 
folk of the world. He needed no new "ism" to teach 
it. When he left Harvard a doctor who gave him 
a physical examination informed him that he had 
heart trouble and that he must not take vigorous 
exercise or run upstairs. Mr. Roosevelt replied: 
"Doctor, I am going to do all the things you tell me 
not to do. If I've got to live the sort of life you 
have described, I don't care how short it is." And 
he proceeded to do so, and in spite of the warning 
grew a sturdiness of body and spirit that simply fed 
on difficulties. 

He steadily followed lines of hardihood and risk. 
He built his spirit as he did his body. His cowboy 
days came at such a critical time in his life and 
were so influential in "preparing" him that they 
will best illustrate the school in which he trained. 
He never, even at the last, claimed proficiency in 
horseback riding. He merely sat astride the most 
vicious beast with the same gritty grin that he 
"rode" the recalcitrant politicians when that was 
a part of his day's work. 

One day a wild horse jumped a fence and threw 
him headlong. His arm was broken, but he re- 
mounted and did not notice it until another jolt 
caused the bones to slip so that the hand dropped 
out of place. At another time, a bucking "devil" 
fell backward on him and split the joint of his shoul- 
der. But, he remarked, "On both occasions there 
was nothing to do but remount and go on, for often 
tlie nearest doctor was more than one hundred miles 
away." 



PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 79 

At one time, while herding cattle, he was in the 
saddle for forty straight hours, changing horses five 
times and going through a rainstorm which kept 
him wet until the clothes dried on his back. At an- 
other time he rode one mount for twenty-four hours 
but at a slower pace. He endured hardness as a 
good soldier. 

"Bill" Sewall insisted that Mr. Roosevelt was 
always "fair-minded." He early trained himself to 
take no advantages, and even under exasperating 
circumstances to see the other fellow's side. During 
a stiff boxing bout while a student at Harvard time 
was called and he dropped his hands. His opponent 
instead of stopping took advantage of this opening 
and put in a smashing blow that brought blood. The 
onlookers angrily cried, "Foul," and would have mal- 
treated the offender, but Mr. Roosevelt rushed up, 
shouting, "He didn't hear. He didn't hear," mean- 
ing the "time" call of the referee. He was fearless 
in following his convictions and defending his rights. 

He proved to the cow punchers that he was a 
"real" fellow. He lived on their "fare." He took 
orders from the chief of the drives and did team 
work. He endured their privations and entered into 
their sympathies and grew both physically and in 
personality betimes. 

He became a stranger to fear. The Marquis de 
Mores, a neighboring ranchman of wealth, who, un- 
like Mr. Roosevelt, exploited the fact, was very 
jealous of Mr. Roosevelt and very ready to attribute 
wrong motives to his actions. One of Mores' men 
claimed self-defense in a murder trial while one of 



80 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Mr. Roosevelt's men was a witness to disprove the 
claim. Mores charged Roosevelt with trying to 
entangle him and proposed a duel. The bluff was 
called and rifles at twelve paces named — each to ad- 
vance one pace until the other was killed. Mr. 
Roosevelt detested dueling, but he knew this would 
cure the bully; and it did, for he backed down and 
was docile afterward. 

While Roosevelt was civil service commissioner, 
a fellow member from the South, who always carried 
a revolver, was exasperatingly obstructive and in- 
sulting, finally threatening gun play. Mr. Roosevelt 
wrote "Bill" Sewall that he recalled the Mores inci- 
dent and "called" the obstreperous Southerner, who 
quailed in the same way as did the former "brawler." 

Thus had his ranch life naturally developed a 
courage which, backed by a sense of right, ballasted 
by rare wisdom and untainted by selfishness, made 
him unafraid of the "beasts" or "bullies" at Albany 
and Washington. 

Mr. Roosevelt recognized that he was the product 
of all these educative experiences. He remarked : 

"I had to train myself painfully and laboriously not 
merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and 
spirit." 

He said once to Mr. Leary: "My experience has 
been that the man who does not do his work is the 
kind who abuses his health and if alive, is not much 
good at sixty, or, for that matter, years before." 

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends," and to 
the Christian it is not blind. The believer in God 



PROVIDENTIALLY PEEPARED 81 

recognizes daily events as signposts and follows the 
directions. There are no accidents in a divinely 
ordered life. Many incidents foretold the future and 
helped Mr. Roosevelt find the pathway. 

Mr. Thayer, a fellow student, recalls a meeting of 
the Alpha Delta Phi, in Charles Washburn's room, 
when Theodore and he discussed lifework problems. 
Mr. Roosevelt affirmed : "I am going to try to help 
the cause of better government in New York city; 
I don't know exactly how." Mr. Thayer after re- 
called the fact that he then looked at him sharply 
and saying inwardly, ''I wonder whether he is the 
real thing or only the bundle of eccentricities which 
he appears."^ 

When later it came his turn to prepare a paper 
for the literary society to which he belonged, he 
chose for his subject, "The Machine of Politics." 

Mr. Roosevelt was not primarily interested in 
partisan politics but finally chose a party because 
it offered the best obtainable means for effective 
service. While his father was a Republican, he was 
so independent that the bosses feared him. That 
party had been so long in power that corruption 
had become imbedded. George William Curtis led 
a group who rebelled at partisanship and were as a 
result insultingly styled ''Mugwumps." Mr. Roose- 
velt joined them in opposing Blaine and came near 
to bolting with them. He was never a narrow parti- 
san; he uncovered corruption in the "party" and 
finally cut away from it in an important campaign. 
During his student days a mock election for Presi- 

iLi/e of Theodore Roosevelt, Thayer, p. 20. Houghton Mifflin Company, 
publishers. 



82 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

dent was held with Grant, Sherman, Blaine, and 
Bayard as candidates. His classmates say that 
Roosevelt voted for Senator Bayard, a Democrat. 

While in college he refused to debate on the side 
of a question contrary to his convictions and insisted 
that such debates where contestants supported a 
side contrary to their convictions tended to develop 
insincerity among the students and to minimize "in- 
tensity of conviction." They were prone, he in- 
sisted, to become careless in forming or valuing well-* 
founded convictions. 

Unfortunately, a few years ago a college training 
was only sought by those expecting to become pro- 
fessional men. Mr. Roosevelt was again providen- 
tially prepared, for he expected to be a teacher, and 
consequently received a trained mind which later 
fitted him to be a more capable public servant. 
Otherwise, he would not have entered Harvard and 
so would have lost a large chain of helpful influences. 

He was not a brilliant student, but he was a hard 
plodder. Mr. Thayer says: 

He did fairly well in several unrelated subjects and 
achieved eminence in one, natural science. He had an all- 
round quality, . . . but he had also power of concentration 
and thoroughness. 

Mrs. Robinson says that his college course broad- 
ened him but it also gave him association with men 
of his own age which had before been impossible be- 
cause of his delicacy of health. 

He entered the military competitions held on the 
grounds of the Watertown Arsenal but never drew 



PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 83 

any prizes. This training, however, gave him a 
knowledge of military affairs which served him well 
when he entered the Spanish War. 

He was mysteriously led to study the War of 1812 
and thus to write a history of the navy while still 
a student in Harvard. This gave him invaluable in- 
formation in preparing him for the organization 
work he did as assistant secretary of the navy, 
which probably insured early success in the war with 
Spain, since he trained the men to shoot straight, 
so that later they sunk the Spanish fleet very quickly. 
He selected Dewey and gave him secret orders to 
capture Manila. At the time he took the position 
his friends had advised him that he was too big to 
accept anything but a Cabinet position and that it 
would cheapen him to be merely an assistant — ^but he 
saw in it a good chance to "serve." 

Even his friendships at Harvard were predictive 
of his future. From childhood he always carefully 
picked his associates, thus securing unique and 
varied companions. He did not eat at Memorial 
Hall, Harvard, but formed a private boarding club 
of eight which held together for the full four years. 
Afterward the club furnished a doctor, a lawyer, a 
business man, a cotton broker, a railroad man, a 
corporation head (who was also a congressman), an 
invalid, and a President. No two followed the same 
profession. He was a close friend of George Von L. 
Meyer — ^later his Attorney-General. He opposed 
Robert Bacon for captain of the class crew. Bacon 
was elected anyway, and the second year he fought 
for him, quoting Lincoln about not swapping horses 



84 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

in the middle of a stream; afterward he was his 
Secretary of State. Though Leonard Wood was a 
freshman in Medical School while Theodore was a 
senior in Harvard, yet they were congenial asso- 
ciates. Henry Cabot Lodge was an instructor in his- 
tory whom Theodore at first disliked because he 
"marked the papers too hard" but afterward joined 
in an early political contest. Ex-Congressman 
Charles A. Washburne, a member of his boarding 
club, said, "The qualities I knew in the boy are the 
qualities most observed in the man." A little while 
before his decease, Mr. Roosevelt repeated an early 
and prophetic pledge : "I have kept the promise that 
I made to myself when I was twenty-one. That 
promise was to live my life to the hilt until I was 
sixty, and I have kept that promise." 

Having completed college, he was ready for the 
next directive influence. It came. In the fall of 
1881, he entered the law school of Columbia Univer- 
sity. He studied in the law office of his uncle, Robert 
B. Roosevelt, who was chairman of the Committee 
of 70, in its fight against Boss Tweed and his gang. 
This uncle was a member of the Board of Aldermen 
and had been at one time minister to the Netherlands. 
He was a political leader of aggressive moral con- 
victions, and naturally this atmosphere influenced 
Theodore. George Haven Putnam told me that soon 
after this time Theodore became a special partner in 
the publishing house of that name. "He brought to 
me a multitude of publishing plans, for the most part 
not practical, but when I turned them down he took 
it with good nature. . . . His exuberant and sug- 



PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 85 

gestive personality so near me made it impossible to 
carry on my correspondence," said Major Putnam. 
He therefore suggested to the District Republican 
Committee that ^'Roosevelt would make an excellent 
representative in the Assembly." This led to his 
nomination, and in great delight he came in one 
Monday with the nomination made and said: "I 
am going into politics. I have always wanted to 
have a chance of taking hold of public affairs." 
There are other explanations but they do not pre- 
clude this one. He joined the local Republican Club 
and to beat a culpable boss he agreed to "run" when 
no one else could be found, at the request of "Joe" 
Murray. 

Mr. Roosevelt is the only man ever elected Presi- 
dent who was born and raised in a great city, 
except W. H. Taft, who was born in Cincinnati. 
City life is not conducive to health, initiative, or 
democratic mixing, though it may furnish the best 
possible school for the study of humanity to the 
right-spirited man. Mr. Roosevelt turned his hin- 
drance into a help by appropriating all the advan- 
tages of the city and then, at a critical time in his 
life, going into the far West to take a postgraduate 
course in soul culture. His body was far from ro- 
bust. His "faith" had been almost shattered by the 
sudden death of both wife and mother. He had been 
disgusted with the condoned corruption among the 
"respectable" men of his own class. He had been 
accustomed to an ease that threatened both his 
vigor and his democratic bearing. His bent toward 
a literary hermitage was growing. There was no un- 



86 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

usual reason why he should go West. His pilgrimage 
can only be explained by a belief in God's leadership 
for an earnest man seeking his will. The Divine 
Hand was not absent in his selection of a companion 
who was to lead him out of his slough of despond- 
ency, in the person of ''Bill" Sewall, who was 
brought to the ranch as manager. "Bill" told the 
writer: ''My grandfather was a minister. One 
uncle put seven boys into the ministry. My own 
children are all members of the church." "Bill," 
while a student of the Bible, was not a formal re- 
ligionist, but had a hardy faith in God, a noble set 
of plain ideals, and a rich and sweetened common 
sense. He was just the teacher that Mr. Roosevelt 
needed, as he studied in God's out-of-doors amidst 
primitive conditions and "nature-cured" men. Beal 
men of the plains gave deference only to hardihood 
and character. "Roughing it" built the body, cleared 
the brain, constructed confidence, and destroyed 
softening artificiality. His sorrow sweetened in- 
stead of soured and God spoke out of the bushes in 
the quiet wilderness. Theodore Roosevelt was a 
new man and prepared for his work by his "herding" 
experience even as was Moses, that earlier leader, 
who passed through a similar experience. 

And now came a succession of tests to try out 
his grit, his humility, and his ability. And he passed 
muster. First he met defeat for mayor, but here he 
gave a new note to campaigning; then followed ap- 
pointment to the undesirable Civil Service Commis- 
sion, where he exhibited a revolutionizing of 
public office; then came the police job which had 



PROVIDENTIALLY PREPARED 87 

^^broken" every man who undertook it but in which 
he inaugurated a new day for civic government; 
then he accepted the assistant secretaryship of the 
navy when he was big enough for a Cabinet appoint- 
ment and was able to use his college-day researches ; 
then he insisted on being a subordinate, lieu- 
tenant-colonel, in the Rough Riders, from which he 
arose to notable military efficiency. At last he 
seems to have been recognized, for he was elected 
Governor. (He was elected to office only three times 
after his legislative days during his whole career.) 
But again his humility was to be tested and he is 
"shelved" by being made Vice-President. To pre- 
pare for a possible future, he used even this "decora- 
tive" office by starting a law course under Justice 
White, but once more man proposed but God dis- 
posed, and at last he came to the highest place of 
influence. But even there he must "fight a good 
fight," and was destined later to stand almost alone 
amidst seeming defeat. He literally inherited the 
promise : "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matt. 
25. 21). Is there any man so wise that he dare af- 
firm that Mr. Roosevelt did not, day by day, see the 
hand of God in all these preparatory steps and so 
rest confidently in the outcome, no matter what ap- 
parent defeats came? 

Bill Sewall said to the writer: 

When Theodore lost his wife and mother it almost un- 
balanced his mind. But he never noticed or was affected 
by the loss of material things. We lost one half of our 
cattle by drought, snow, and the unfair tactics of the big 



88 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

herd owners. He lost nearly $50,000 by the ranch venture. 
But he was never blue or complained about that. He di- 
vided all the profits but endured all the losses alone. He 
had absolutely no instinct for money. He allowed that to 
die while he developed instead the instinct for service 
which alone appealed to him. He expected to stay on the 
ranch permanently when he first came. But God had other 
plans. When he left the ranch he was clear bone, muscle, 
and grit and physically strong enough to be anything he 
wanted to be from President down. 

While President, he journeyed to Yellowstone 
Park with John Burroughs for a brief vacation and 
rest. He left his secretary, physician, and secret 
service men outside the Park. Then, one quiet day, 
he requested the privilege of tramping off into a 
solitude to spend the day all alone. How did he 
spend such times ? No one can declare dogmatically 
but a conclusion may be safely drawn from one in- 
cident related to me by Mr. Leary: 

While campaigning in Canton, Ohio, Mr. Roosevelt sud- 
denly disappeared and a reporter who told me about it 
finally found him kneeling beside the grave of William 
McKinley. 

When I related this incident to Dr. Lambert, he said, 
"I could well believe that to be true from my knowl- 
edge of him." He believed in God. Why should he 
not go apart to take stock of his spiritual supplies 
and test his relationship to God? Elijah found that 
the still small voice of direction followed the "strong 
wind,'' the earthquake, and the fire. Why should 
other prophets be deprived of equal assurance and 
guidance when sorrows and storms shake their souls ? 



PKOVIDENTIALLY PREPAKED 89 

If so, then Mr. Roosevelt had such solaces. It was 
written of Moses "like one who saw the King In- 
visible he never flinched'' (Moffatt translation). 
That fact can alone explain the life of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 



CHAPTER V 
THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 

"If a man lives a decent life and does his work fairly and 
squarely so that those dependent on him and attached to 
him are better for his having lived then he is a success." — 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach 
to any people. Prov. 14. S4. 

TO Mr. Roosevelt the very contest for the right 
was a knightly joust which itself gave thrill 
and joy. In an address he once said, "Ag- 
gressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport 
the world knows." He entered his campaigns in 
this spirit and turned life into a game where he did 
serious business with a happy heart. 

He developed an instinct for right as an artist 
would the aesthetic nature or the mother the ability 
to intuitively interpret the needs of her child. John 
Burroughs relates a carefully planned attempt of 
political opponents at Albany to besmirch his 
character. 

He was not caught. His innate rectitude and instinct 
for the right course saved him as it has saved him many 
times since. I do not think that in any emergency he has 
to debate with himself long as to the right course to be 
pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. 

As a "disciple" he had a right to claim the prom- 
ise that the Spirit would guide "into all truth." 

90 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 91 

When Elihu Koot left his Cabinet, though a very 
undemonstrative man, he wrote Mr. Koosevelt : "I 
shall always be happy to have been a part of the 
administration directed by your sincere and rugged 
adherence to right and devotion to the trust of our 
country." 

Senator Lodge said: 

Roosevelt was always advancing, always struggling to 
make things better, ... He looked always for an ethical 
question. He was at his best when he was fighting the 
battle of right against wrong. 

Senator Beveridge said: ^Those who were 
near Colonel Roosevelt knew . . . that . . . the mo- 
tive power within him was always ethical convic- 
tion." 

Eugene Thwing, after saying, ^^The strength of 
truth was always the one secret of Roosevelt's great 
power," quotes him as saying : "We scorn the man 
who would not stand for justice though the whole 
world come in arms against him." 

Jacob Riis reports a lady who said : 

I always wanted to make Roosevelt out as a living em- 
bodiment of high ideals, but somehow every time he did 
something that seemed really great, it turned out, upon 
looking at it seriously, that it was only just the right thing 
to do. 

Lemuel Quigg was told, when he came as Platt^s 
messenger to question Roosevelt concerning his at- 
titude if he became Governor, that he would try to 
get on with the organization, but that he would ex- 



92 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

pect the organization to be equally sincere in helping 
when he was trying to do something for the public 
good. In a stiff controversy, he said, later : 

I know that you did not in any way wish to represent 
me as willing to consent to act otherwise than in ac- 
cordance with my conscience; indeed, you said you knew 
that I would be incapable of acting save with good faith 
to the people at large. 

Vice President Coolidge said, in an address in New 
York : ^'Theodore Roosevelt never lapsed. He was 
against what he believed to be wrong everywhere." 

While riding the range with one of his own cow- 
boys, during the Dakota days, he came across an 
unbranded maverick which his cowboy caught, 
threw, and was about to mark with the Roosevelt 
brand. Mr. Roosevelt thereupon discharged the boy, 
who protested that he was working in the interests 
of his boss, and received the reply, "Yes, my friend, 
and if you will steal for me, you will steal from me." 

He was always fearful in receiving financial re- 
muneration lest he would not render commensurate 
service. When Lawrence Abbott closed the contract 
for him to begin his services with The Outlook, at 
112,000 a year— a good salary for The Outlook to 
pay but only one tenth of what other concerns of- 
fered — he put his arm around Lawrence and said, 
"Now that is very good of you, Lawrence, but do 
you really think you can afford it?" He refused to 
sign a contract with the Metropolitan Magazine at 
first because he could not see how a monthly periodi- 
cal could profitably pay what they offered him for 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 93 

an article every thirty days. He insisted, "I do not 
like being in the position of not being able to de- 
liver full value,'' and he signed only when convinced. 
Gerald Lee wrote of Mr. Roosevelt : 

Other men have done things that were good to do, but 
the very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself, 
goodness with teeth, with a fist, goodness that smiled, that 
ha-ha'd, that leaped and danced — perpetual motion of 
goodness, goodness that reeked — has been reserved for 
Theodore Roosevelt. He has been a colossal drummer of 
goodness. He has proved himself a master salesman of 
moral values. 

This sturdy personality was not an accident. The 
skyscraper stands because rooted in the eternal 
rocks and fibered by highly tempered steel ribs. He 
founded his life on the Rock of Ages and steel-ribbed 
his personality by moral standards of finest metal 
highly tempered in the fires of hottest testings. He 
accepted no substitutes nor permitted flawed ma- 
terials to go into the structure. And so he stood, 
tall and strong, in the sunshine of approval or in the 
storm of most bitter vituperation. 

Character is to right what brain is to thinking. 
Men easily and loftily assert that religion to them 
is contained in the Golden Rule. But it is a com- 
plex thing to apply it to daily problems. Mr. Roose- 
velt once said about one phase of its application : 

The Golden Rule means that we ought to treat every man 
and woman as we ought to like to be treated ourselves. 
I say "ought to like" and not merely "like," for it cer- 
tainly does not mean that we are to divorce unselfishness 
from foresight, common sense and common honesty. 



94 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

At another time, in speaking of his intricate work 
at Albany, he said: 

If I am sure a thing is right or wrong, why, then I 
know how to act; but lots of times there is a little of both 
on each side, and then it becomes mighty puzzling to know 
the exact course to follow. 

A scholar is not made by two years or ten years 
of study but by a lifetime of study. A good man is 
built in the same way by a lifetime of watching, 
seeking advice, following the inner light and seeking 
more, and having found the right to fight for it every 
time to the death. To be equipped to know and to 
do the right is a big task. It cost Mr. Roosevelt as 
much to get this ability as it does anyone else. Only 
the shallow slide through life with ease. 

The Israelites only blew away the hulk of nations 
decayed by wickedness when they destroyed the 
tribes on their march to the promised land. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt believed that he was a prophet warn- 
ing America against the fate of these people and of 
Greece and Rome, and so he urged the nation to ob- 
serve the laws of right as the sine qua non of ex- 
istence. He therefore enforced righteousness in the 
same spirit that a patriot fought for the flag when 
it was in danger. This was an early ideal and is 
enforced in his "Oliver. Cromwell" — where he in- 
sists that a nation loses its liberty by ^'licentiousness 
no less than by servility." This sin, he insists, is a 
sign of lost self-control and is therefore no different 
than if the helplessness sprang from a "craven dis- 
trust of its own powers." 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 95 

He was very explicit here in naming a sin which 
is commonly condoned as the privilege of the free 
but which the world now learns brings the worst 
affliction known to the flesh. 

Nothing could divert his assaults on dangerous 
practices. Patriotic thrills were stirring a meeting 
at Madison Square Garden held to welcome the 
representatives of the sane republic which imme- 
diately followed the overthrow of the Czar in Kussia. 
A few days before, a number of innocent Negroes 
brought into Saint Louis as strike breakers had 
been mobbed and murdered by white strikers. When 
Mr. Roosevelt spoke, he arraigned the Saint Louis 
rioters in no uncertain manner. He declared that 
when Americans extend greetings to the representa- 
tives of a ''new" republic, we should at the same 
time explain to them that such lawlessness as ap- 
peared in East Saint Louis is thoroughly criminal. 
The life destroying riots were as inexcusable, he 
insisted, even though they were Negroes, as were the 
outbreaks upon the Jews in Czar-ruled Russia. He 
declared that since this conviction was upon him, 
he could not keep silent, he must express condemna- 
tion for such deeds ''that give the lie to our words 
within our own country." 

When Mr. Gompers followed he undertook to ex- 
cuse the rioters because employers were warned 
against bringing in Negro strike-breakers. Mr. 
Roosevelt was aroused and amidst a divided audi- 
ence, he arose again and protested that similar ex- 
cuses had been made by the Russian autocracy for 
the pogroms of Jews. And then amidst Gompers' 



96 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

further explanations and much commotion, he right- 
eously shouted : 

Oh, friends, we have gathered to greet the men and 
women of New Russia, a republic founded on the principles 
of justice to all. On such an evening never will I sit mo- 
tionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for 
the murder of the helpless. 

Some questioned the delicacy of Mr. Roosevelt's ac- 
tions, but such a situation could not be handled 
with gloves, and he merely used the weapons at hand 
to assail an un-American doctrine. He always did 
that whether he struck capitalist or laborite. 

As early as 1894, in writing on the "Manly Virtues 
and Practical Politics," he said: 

No amount of intelligence and no amount of energy will 
save a nation which is not honest, and no government can 
ever be a permanent success if administered in accordance 
with base ideals. 

He developed the idea later in an article in The Out- 
look: 

The foreign policy of a great and self-respecting country 
should be conducted on exactly the same plane of honor, of 
insistence upon one's own rights, and of respect for the 
rights of others, that marks the conduct of a brave and 
honorable man when dealing with his fellows. 

From his address at Christiania, Norway, on his 
return from Africa under the subject of "Peace," it 
seems fair to conclude that he favored some kind of 
association of nations, for he said : 

It would be a master stroke if those great Powers hon- 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 97 

estly bent on peace would form a Leaguer of Peace, not only 
to keep the peace among themselves but to prevent by 
force, if necessary, its being broken by others. Each na- 
tion must keep well prepared to defend itself until the 
establishment of some form of international police power 
competent and willing to prevent violence as between na- 
tions. 

He insisted that the "commonplace virtues" alone 
insure the perpetuity of a nation: 

No prosperity and no glory can save a nation that is 
rotten at heart. We must ... see to it that not only our 
citizens in private life, but above all, our statesmen in 
public life, practice the old commonplace virtues which 
from time immemorial have lain at the root of all true na- 
tional well-being {American Ideals, Gilder, p. 271). 

In an address at Grant's birthplace, Galena, Il- 
linois, in April, 1900, he said, concerning the power 
of the nation to produce men like Lincoln and Grant 
to meet future crises of the nation: 

The men we need are the men of strong, earnest, solid 
character — the men who possess the homely virtues, and 
who to these virtues add rugged courage, rugged honesty, 
and high resolve. 

Explaining his rule in appointing men to office, he 
said: 

If I am in such doubt about an applicant's character and 
fitness for office as would lead me not to put my private 
affairs in his hands, then I shall not put public affairs in 
his hands. 

A well-known Democrat was working hard for the 



98 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

passage of some righteous bills when Governor 
Roosevelt, who was helping him to get them enacted, 
was warned that in thus doing he was aiding the 
author, Mr. Coler, to strengthen himself as a rival 
candidate for Governor. He replied, "Maybe so, but 
he is right and he is going to have those bills if I 
can get them through the Legislature for him." 

In his Pacific Theological Lectures, he said: "I 
ask you people here, whatever your politics may be, 
to be nonpartisan when the question of honesty is 
involved." And again: 

One great realizable ideal for our people is to discourage 
mere law honesty. . . . The best laws and the most rigid 
enforcement will not by themselves produce a really healthy 
type of morals in the community. In addition we must 
have the public opinion which frowns on the man who 
violates the spirit of the law even although he keeps within 
the letter (Realizable Ideals, p. 24). 

That is a bit similar to the Master's declarations 
concerning the "legal" dodges of the Pharisees. Such 
actions eat out the very fiber of fine citizenship. 
Crooks still wear the livery of "legality" and respec- 
tability. 

He rightly concluded that dishonesty was a 
rapidly multiplying disease germ that made its 
willing victim an unreliable citizen, and so he says 
in the same lecture: 

The minute that a man is dishonest along certain lines, 
even though he pretends to be honest along other lines, 
you can be sure that it is only a pretense, it is only ex- 
pediency; and you cannot trust to the mere sense of ex- 
pediency to hold a man straight under heavy pressure 
(Realizable Ideals, pp. 97, 98). 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 99 

Believing that moral disorders were as dangerous 
to the nation as infectious sores were to the indi- 
vidual, he had no patience with anyone who claimed 
to know about corruption in public life and then 
went no further than to deal in innuendoes. When, 
therefore, a noted free-lance author made general 
charges against the government in a novel, he sent 
for him and said : 

We shall have a government investigation; if your 
charges are right, I will change the conditions; if you 
haven't got the facts, I will brand you as a liar to the 
American people. 

On entering the Legislature he believed that the 
prominent men who moved in the same circle with 
and were friends of his father were opposed to po- 
litical corruption. He was rudely awakened to find 
that many "respectable" citizens were mixed up in 
crooked politics as well as in crooked business and 
defended it as "practical." Political graft was con- 
doned all over America. But Mr. Koosevelt was a 
Daniel born for this hour, and he knew not how to 
grow strong on such "meat" as the henchmen served. 
He was Jehovah's man and accepted his menu. 

When full grown he came to power and imme- 
diately made efforts to save his country by reading 
the foreboding signs of the times and commanding 
repentance. 

A corrupt judge had written a prominent financier 
that he was "willing to go to the very verge of ju- 
dicial discretion to serve 'your vast interests.' " Mr. 
Koosevelt introduced a resolution to impeach him 



100 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

by name and arraigned the Attorney-General for 
neglect of duty. The Republican leader asked that 
the resolution be defeated, since reputations had been 
ruined in this way, and he wanted to give young Mr. 
Roosevelt time to think before pushing his loose 
charges. That night ^'wise" friends advised the 
young legislator to subside. But he only set his 
jaws and each day appeared on the floor with new 
motions and facts and regularly furnished the papers 
additional material. This aroused the State; and in 
spite of vilification and abuse, the young man 
whipped the evil forces, and the resolution passed 
by a big vote. 

Everything else failing, the bosses endeavored to 
cow Mr. Roosevelt by hiring a big bully to beat him 
up. One evening as he was leaving the old Delavan 
House, where the legislators congregated, a hired 
thug, "Stubby" Lewis, coming out with a noisy 
crowd, collided with Mr. Roosevelt, and angrily 
asked why he ran into him. Before Mr. Roosevelt 
could answer, the bully struck out, but the blow 
never landed, for the trained boxer had soon given 
"Stubby" the beating of his life. 

Mr. Roosevelt was greatly aided by the newspapers 
and favored them in every possible way. But he 
fearlessly assailed a type which he believed was do- 
ing great harm ; 

Yellow journalism deifies the cult of the mendacious, the 
sensational, and the inane, and throughout its wide but 
vapid field does as much to vulgarize and degrade the 
popular conscience as any influence under which the coun- 
try can suffer. These men sneer at the very idea of pay- 



I 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 101 

ing heed to the dictates of a sound morality; as one of 
their number has cynically put it, they are concerned merely 
with selling the public whatever the public will buy — a 
theory of conduct which would justify the existence of 
every keeper of an opium den, of every foul creature who 
ministers to the vices of mankind.^ 

After Mr. Koosevelt's first term in the Legislature, 
when it was found that he could be neither con- 
trolled nor cowed, an old friend of the family took 
the young man out to lunch and gave him fatherly 
advice. 

He explained to Mr. Koosevelt that he had demon- 
strated in the legislature that he had unusual ability 
or he could not "have made the reform play'^ so 
effectively. Then he warned Mr. Roosevelt not to 
"overplay your hand" and that to stop now was to 
insure himself an influential position in business or 
law. He could thus join the "people" who "control 
others" and corral the real "rewards." He was thus 
advised to get out of politics and join the aristo- 
cratic group with whom he belonged. 

Mr. Roosevelt asked some direct questions and 
found that the political ring was merely the puppet 
of a few rich men who really ran the country. 
Hence he came away more determined than ever to 
fight this "system," which was as dangerous and 
deadly as the Czarism of Russia. 

When he was enforcing the law for Sunday closing, 
many were fearful lest when crime long condoned 
in the saloon was checked, revolution might result, 
even as they predicted over the enforcement of pro- 

^Lawrence Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 28. 



102 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

hibition. And so all classes, including some timid 
good people, pleaded with him to go slow and use 
discretion. But he would not compromise and re- 
plied that there was nothing about discretion in his 
oath of office and quoted Abraham Lincoln's words : 

Let reverence of law be taught in schools and colleges, be 
written in primers and spelling-books, be published from 
pulpits and proclaimed in legislative houses, and enforced 
la the courts of justice — in short, let it become the po- 
litical religion of the nation. 

And he went straight on, fearlessly enforcing the 
law amidst abuse, threats, and often great loneli- 
ness. 

Crooked business always thrives by assigning 
rigid righteousness to the realm of the impractical. 
He hit it when he said: "If there is one thing I 
dislike, it is the expression, 'Business is business,' 
especially when it verges on rascality." He again 
punctured the plea for preferential treatment made 
by "business": 

The outcry against stopping dishonest practices among 
the very wealthy is precisely similar to the outcry raised 
against every effort for cleanliness and decency in city 
government, because, forsooth, it will "hurt business." 

Business interests have always demanded special 
consideration, falsely claiming that commercial pros- 
perity insured happiness and security. The moral 
diseases which destroyed Rome were nurtured amidst 
"business" prosperity. A plastering salve will not 
check the growth of a cancer ; it requires a knife. 

Germany would have secured a strangle hold on 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 103 

America long ago if it had not been for President 
Koosevelt's fearless devotion to the Monroe Doctrine 
when blind ^^business" endeavored to dull our eyes 
to the facts. Mr. Roosevelt tells us that when he 
forced Germany to withdraw from South America : 

Many of them, including bankers, merchants, and rail- 
way magnates, criticized the action of the President and 
the Senate, on the ground that it had caused business dis- 
turbance. Such a position is essentially ignoble. When 
a question of national honor or of national right or wrong 
is at stake, no question of financial interest should be con- 
sidered for a moment. Those wealthy men who wish the 
abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine because its assertion 
may damage their business bring discredit to themselves, 
and so far as they are able, discredit to the nation of which 
they are a part. 

When praised for his independent courage which 
led him unaided and unadvised to undertake a peace 
treaty between warring Russia and Japan, he mini- 
mized success as the sign of the rightness of an act. 
In a letter to his daughter, Mrs. Longworth, he tells 
her that he would have been laughed at and con- 
demned if he had failed to bring peace, but now that 
he was successful he was overpraised and credited 
with being "extremely long-headed," when, in fact, 
events so shaped themselves that "I would have felt 
as if I were flinching from a plain duty if I had acted 
otherwise." At another time he said to Mr. Payne: 

I often get credit for unusual wisdom, when the fact is 
that I always do what is right, and that turns out so well 
that they credit it to political sagacity. Right gives light 
that some men credit to other causes. 



104 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

Mr. Koosevelt wrote "Bill" Sewall six months 
after assuming the governorship, assuring him that 
it took as much courage to fill his office as it did to 
go up San Juan Hill. 

And he went against wrong so intrenched that 
only a man inspired and armored by God would dare 
to attack it. To him right was as vital as the heart 
is to life. He wrote a friend that when he came into 
the police department, ''both promotions and ap- 
pointments were made almost solely for money, and 
the prices were discussed with cynical frankness." 
The big Tammany leaders never even denied the 
newly announced agreement whereby the saloons 
were promised immunity from blackmail, until they 
paid the police in cash, for the privilege of remain- 
ing open on Sunday, provided that in the future they 
rendered absolute political support. Governor Hill, 
seriously considered as a candidate for President, 
condoned the passing of a Sunday closing law which 
was to be used, Mr. Roosevelt openly charged, for 
purposes of graft. 

As shown when he "beat up" the hired thug, Mr. 
Roosevelt was ready to meet his opponents with 
physical courage which he had built up for use when 
that was necessary. One day he secured the heavy 
leg of a chair and laid it close at hand while he 
presided over a committee accredited to be corrupt. 
When they refused to report out a worthy bill either 
favorably or unfavorably because they first de- 
manded pay, he arose, put the bill in his pocket and 
said he would report it. Angry murmurs over lost 
pelf arose, but with the chair leg grasped in his 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 105 

hand, he walked calmly out of the room un- 
molested. 

When the Legislature, because it was controlled 
by the corporations, refused to pass his franchise 
tax bill, he sent a message to the Speaker, who tore 
it up in his messenger's face. He sent a duplicate 
and warned the Speaker that if it was not read by 
him, it would be read from the floor by some member, 
and if that plan failed then he himself would come 
and read it. After that it was read, and the bill 
passed. 

Dean Lewis describes his calling at Mr. Koose- 
velt's office while he was assistant secretary of the 
navy. He found Mr. Koosevelt in spirited conver- 
sation and tried to hastily withdraw. He recalled 
him, however, and he recognized the one being lec- 
tured as a prominent lawyer and an officeholder in 
a former administration. Mr. Roosevelt was ar- 
raigning him vigorously for selling the government 
a rotten ship and trying to sell another. When the 
lawyer tried to mention his clients, Mr. Roosevelt 
said, "I congratulate them on having an attorney 
who will do work for them which they wouldn't have 
the face to do for themselves." Then telling him 
that the boat already bought was worthless, he adds, 
"It will be God's mercy if she doesn't go down with 
brave men on her — men who go to war to risk their 
lives, instead of staying home to sell rotten hulks to 
the government." That was a sample of many 
"dressings" given to "respectable" crooks. He had 
an uncanny way of uncovering evil trails. 

But with it all he kept his sweetness of nature and 



106 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

his gentleness of heart. Rudyard Kipling might 
well cable, "For me it is as if Bunyan's ^Great-Heart' 
had died in the midst of battle." 

He believed that laws should be righteous and then 
nothing should excuse their non-enforcement. He 
knew no exceptions and so he enforced the Sunday 
saloon law in New York. Under a new enactment 
the mayor was empowered to remove the Tammany- 
controlled magistrates. Mayor Strong did so, and 
the new ones were to be seated Monday, July 1. Mr. 
Roosevelt announced, amidst the speechless conster- 
nation of saloonists and the stiff opposition of most 
of the people and the active support of almost none, 
that on Sunday, June 30, the saloons must close. 
The results were amazing under his relentless pur- 
pose and skillful management. Benefits were every- 
where reported. As a result, Sunday-closing cam- 
paigns spread over the nation and everywhere 
brought better conditions. This helped show the 
possibilities of a dry nation and so aided national 
prohibition. 

Chauncey Depew claims' to have won the bosses 
over to the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt for gover- 
nor. The discovery that one million of the nine set 
apart to build canals had been stolen convinced 
Piatt that the party was doomed. Depew, called into 
conference, was told that Odell had suggested Roose- 
velt and Piatt objected, "He has always been un- 
controllable either by the party organization or his 
superiors, and I am afraid he might be most dan- 
gerous to our organization." Depew replied : "He 
is the only man you can elect. When the heckler 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 107 

asks about the theft of a million dollars, I will reply, 
^We have nominated for Governor the greatest thief- 
catcher there is in the world. As police commis- 
sioner he cleaned up New York. He will find out 
the State thief and punish him.' " Piatt answered, 
"That settles it." His very methods which they had 
assailed as impractical saved the day for them. 

In 1903, in an address at the dedication of a 
monument to General W. T. Sherman, Mr. Roose- 
velt said : 

We can as little afford to tolerate a dishonest man in 
the public service as a coward in the army. The murderer 
takes a single life, the corruptionist in public life, whether 
he be bribe-giver or bribe-taker, strikes at the heart of 
the commonwealth. 

It was natural, therefore, that he attacked dishon- 
est officials wherever found. Bribery and graft were 
so common that they had even entered the United 
States Senate. No one had the temerity to attack 
them there, however, until President Roosevelt 
backed up the prosecution which led to the expulsion 
of two dishonest senators. One of them had ac- 
cepted fees in arguing fraudulent land cases. Land 
had been '^stolen" by bribery for so many years that 
it came to be considered legitimate. This senator in 
extenuation produced a contract showing that his 
partner was to receive all fees, but the water-mark 
on the paper betrayed the fact that the paper had 
been manufactured long after the date of the 
contract. It had really been made after he was a 
senator. 



108 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

A great ^'Trust" was also caught stealing from 
the government. Parr, a customs inspector, grow- 
ing suspicious, investigated and found that each of 
the seventeen scales was filled with a secret spring 
which when manipulated by the trust's representa- 
tive reduced the weight of the sugar when the duty 
was collected. The trust was prosecuted and paid 
the government over two million dollars it had 
stolen in this way. The whole ^^case," step by step, 
was regularly reported direct to the President. "In- 
fluence" nearly shunted Parr ofiP the trail, but Mr. 
Roosevelt, learning of it, kept him on the job. 

When guilt was clearly proved and there was no 
evidence of repentance he had no sympathy with the 
practice of showing clemency and so he condemned 
the pardons so freely granted soon after he left the 
Presidency. He objected that the criminals were 
all pardoned and escaped long sentences on the 
ground of ill health, which he felt was a subterfuge. 
They were proven guilty of the worst offenses, rang- 
ing from "a crime of brutal violence" to "the crimes 
by astute corruptionists." He felt, therefore, that 
the community as a whole had been done a grave in- 
justice by these pardons and that the effects would 
be "far reaching in their damages," because their 
crimes had thus been minimized. 

When Mr. Roosevelt returned from Africa he sin- 
cerely desired to enjoy his home and do literary 
work ; but when Mayor Gaynor spoke words of wel- 
come, the day he landed, the urge of service could not 
be silenced and he said : 

And I am ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 109 

able, in helping solve problems which must be solved if 
we of this, the greatest democratic republic upon which 
the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the 
high level of our hopes and its opportunities. 

To be willing to loaf was to him a sign of moral 
ill-health in a world where so much waited to be 
done. He commended the man who would employ 
his leisure in "politics or philanthropy, literature or 
art." Then he continued ; 

But a leisure class whose leisure simply means idleness 
is a curse to the community and in so far as its members 
distinguish themselves chiefly by aping the worst — not 
the best — traits of similar people across the water, they 
become both comic and noxious elements to the body politic 
(American Ideals, p. 25). 

He revealed his wide-reaching service-ideals in the 
social program of the Progressive Party which he 
wrote. It favored workingmen's compensation laws, 
insurance against sickness and nonemployment. It 
prohibited child labor, provided a minimum wage 
and safety and health protection for the various oc- 
cupations. It interdicted night work for women 
and young persons and prescribed one day's rest 
in seven and not more than eight hours work out of 
twenty-four for toilers. Mr. Roosevelt's address 
supporting this program was punctuated with ap- 
plause one hundred and forty-five times. The re- 
forms proposed were so much in line with the king- 
dom of God that it was appropriate for the Progres- 
sive convention to close by singing, "Praise God, 
from whom all blessings flow." 



no ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He held for the nation ideals of service for the 
whole world even as he did for the individual to his 
nation. He was therefore eagerly active in negotiat- 
ing peace between Russia and Japan and in return- 
ing a part of the Chinese indemnity fund. He urged 
the duty of aiding Cuba and heartily favored our 
entrance into the Philippines. Other countries fat- 
tened themselves through their territorial adminis- 
tration of backward sections, but he insisted that it 
was America's duty to develop these weaker people 
and to teach them to walk alone. 

Mr. Roosevelt commended the English and Dutch 
administrators of Malaysia but emphasized the fact 
that the profit coming to the Europeans was the first 
consideration, while with us our sole purpose was to 
benefit the Filipinos even to our own detriment. 

He insisted that the ideal had never been filled by 
any other nation and was so high that few, if any, 
governments in Europe believed that we would ac- 
tually give the Cubans self-government and fit the 
Filipinos to govern themselves. 

With this theory of our nation's place in the world, 
he early saw the necessity of America entering the 
World War and so he said: 

I have a firm conviction that our nation has heen di- 
vinely called or favored to show to Germany and her allies 
that they cannot continue in their criminal policy in- 
definitely without answering for all the suffering and dev- 
astation that have heen caused {The Great Adventure, 
p. 198). 

National and individual success survives and 



THE ESSENTIAL OF SUCCESS 111 

thrives only when ideals and effort are bent toward 
service and follow the rules of righteousness, which 
are the laws of God. That was the theory that in- 
spired and directed all of Mr. Roosevelt's activities. 



CHAPTER VI 

A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 

"The difference between a leader and a boss ia that the 
leader leads and the boss drives." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

For God has not given us a timid spirit but a spirit of 
power and love and discipline. — 2 Tim. 1. 7 (Moffatt's 
translation). 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT stood out conspicu- 
ously like an officer leading troops into 
battle as a leader of righteousness ; he was 
a veritable David in courage. His confidence grew 
out of a consciousness that he was furnished to per- 
form his providentially assigned tasks. He sought 
advice about the "how" to put a conviction into ef- 
fective form, but he never asked about "expediency" 
if he was sure it was right. Fear paralyzes many 
possible leaders. False humility often checks prog- 
ress, ruins a career, and defeats a campaign. God's 
command to "go forward" should always be an- 
swered by "I can." 

When Mr. Roosevelt had left earth and been car- 
ried to his humble cemetery a copy of the poem "The 
Deacon's Prayer," by Samuel Valentine Cole, was 
found among treasured papers with many lines 
scored. Here are three of the important stanzas, 
voicing the "prayer." They are reproduced by per- 
mission of the author: 

112 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 113 

"Not one who merely sits and thinks, 

Looks Buddha-wise, with folded hands; 
Who balances, and blinks, and shrinks, 

And questions — while we wait commands! 
Who dreams, perchance, that right and wrong 

Will make their quarrel up some day, 
And discord be the same as song — 

Lord, not so safe a one, we pray! 

"Nor one who never makes mistakes 

Because he makes not anything; 
But one who fares ahead and breaks 

The path for truth's great following; 
Who takes the way that brave men go — 

Forever up stern duty's hill; 
Who answers 'Yes,' or thunders 'No/ 

According to thy holy will. 

"We want a man whom we can trust, 

To lead us where thy purpose leads; 
Who dares not lie, but dares be just — 

Give us the dangerous man of deeds!" 
So prayed the deacon, letting fall 

Each sentence from his heart; and when 
He took his seat the brethren all, 

As by one impulse, cried, "Amen!" 

It is quite clear that he recognized in these words 
the ideal which he tried to follow. 

Of course egotism tempts every capable person. 
Mr. Roosevelt confessed that early success in the 
Legislature turned his head. He told Mr. Riis: 

I suppose that my head was swelled, ... I took the 
best "mugwump" stand — my own conscience, my own 
judgment were to decide in all things. I would listen to 
no argument, no advice. . . . When I looked around, be- 
fore the session was well under way, I found myself alone. 



IM ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

. . . "He won't listen to anybody," they said, and I would 
not. ... I looked the ground over and made up my mind 
that there were several other excellent people there, with 
honest opinions of the right, even though they differed 
from me. I turned in to help them, and they turned to 
and gave me a hand. And so we were able to get things 
done.^ 

He laughed with the rest when one of his boys 
said, "Father never likes to go to a wedding or a 
funeral, because he can't be the bride at the wedding 
or the corpse at the funeral." 

An egotistical man is always irritable and com- 
plainful over being thwarted. "Bill" Sewall said, 
"Mr. Roosevelt was never irritable and he could not 
endure people who were." Major Putnam aptly 
said, "Colonel Roosevelt had many traits that he 
admired in Andrew Jackson, but his real sweetness 
of nature saved him from arousing the antagonism 
that Jackson had frequently provoked." 

He saved himself from too great concern over any 
particular contest by absorbing himself in an ex- 
traneous matter. When the Century Magazine pub- 
lished a notable article about the ancient Irish Sagas, 
someone asked Mr. Roosevelt how he happened to 
write it. He explained that Congress was in a 
bitter contest over his action in the Brownsville Ne- 
gro soldier murderers' case and, "I knew that it 
would be a long and possibly irritating business if 
I followed it ; so I shut myself up, paid no attention 
to the row, and wrote the article." 

Mr. Roosevelt was so quick in perception and so 



^Lawrence Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 44, 45. 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 115 

economical of time that he often seemed to ignore 
others when he had really digested their suggestions. 
A great leader must take positions and often stick to 
them so tenaciously as to appear stubborn. He once 
said, ''Go ahead, do something, and be willing to take 
responsibility." 

We must command respect by our bearing and 
confidence. The cowboys frequently taunted Mr. 
Koosevelt about his glasses. His usual policy was, 
"Do your job and keep your mouth shut." But dur- 
ing a round-up, when a Texan was peculiarly insult- 
ing in dubbing him a dude, Roosevelt strode up and 
said, "You're talking like an ass," and drew his gun, 
saying, "Put up or shut up! Fight now or be 
friends." The cowboy apologized and later joined 
his outfit. This attitude he carried into his public 

life. 

When assailed for acting on his own judgment in 
the plan for the naval trip around the world, he ad- 
mitted that he acted in that matter as he did in tak- 
ing Panama without consulting the Cabinet, for he 
insisted, "In a crisis the duty of a leader is to lead" 
and not to dodge behind the "timid wisdom of a mul- 
titude of councilors." 

It was charged that as President, he interfered to 
secure legislation just as Wilson and Harding did 
afterward. Answering the charge, he said, "If I 
had not interfered, we would not have had any rate 
bill/'_or beef packers, or pure food, or consular re- 
form, or Panama Canal, or employers' liability bills. 
He considered it his duty as the chosen leader of 
the nation to secure legislation and enforce laws 



116 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

that would benefit the people and "favor the growth 
of intelligence and the diffusion of wealth in such 
manner as will measurably avoid the extreme of 
swollen fortunes and grinding poverty.'' 

When Mr. Roosevelt was charged with a desire to 
boss the country, he replied, "I am a leader. I am 
not a boss. The difference between a boss and a 
leader is that the leader leads and the boss drives." 
He honestly believed he was gifted as a leader and 
was serving under Jehovah's orders as certainly as 
were Israel's leaders. 

Mr. Loeb told the writer : 

Mr. Roosevelt's fervor of intense patriotism was some- 
times taken for egotism. He never had the least trace of 
the real thing. No man was ever so ready to give credit 
to the other fellow. He always made Garfield and Pinchot 
feel that they were doing the job. He wanted them to 
have full credit. That Is the way he attracted and held 
really big men to him. 

Mr. Pinchot told the writer : 

Mr. Roosevelt was most generous in giving credit to 
other people. He had less pride of opinion than any man 
I have ever known. His one outstanding characteristic 
was humility of mind. He was accustomed to say that a 
thing was not worth fighting for that was not worth being 
beaten for. 

He considered it as legitimate to earn a living 
from politics as from medicine or law provided only 
that "the politician puts service to the state as his 
main object." Ability to fill an office, not party 
"pull," should, therefore, settle a candidate's avail- 
ability. While a member of the Civil Service Com- 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 117 

mission, so unpopular among the politicians, he 
wrote his sister explaining that he felt it to be his 
duty to accomplish something worth while either ''in 
politics or literature" because he had premeditatedly 
given up the idea of entering a "money-making 
business." 

He naturally used every method to remind the 
people what he had accomplished so that they 
would keep him at the job. He also drew courage 
and inspiration from achievement along this line as 
the lawyer would in winning a case or the merchant 
in closing a notable sale. 

After the sweeping Kepublican Congressional vic- 
tory in 1918 following President Wilson's reelection, 
the editor of the Metropolitan Magazine found Mr. 
Roosevelt in bed suffering from "a bad attack of 
sciatica" with much pain but jubilant over the vic- 
tory, which he said was not so sweeping as to give 
the reactionaries too much confidence. And referring 
to himself and the Progressives, he said, "And don't 
forget that we did a lot to bring this victory about." 

He was greatly dependent on his friends for en- 
couragement. He was nominated by acclamation 
in 1904 and he seemed to be almost as unanimously 
popular with the people of the nation; but even then 
he at times seriously doubted whether he would 
beat Judge Parker. At one of these depressed times 
he confessed anxiety in a letter to John Hay but 
concluded that whatever came, "How can I help 
being a little proud when I contrast the men and 
the considerations by which I am attacked, and those 
by which I am defended?" 



118 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He was really aggravated by the constant charges 
that his public career was a mere accident; and it 
was a jubilant voice which declared to Mrs. Roose- 
velt, after his sweeping victory in 1904, "Now, my 
dear, I am no longer an accident." 

He had, however, no false and artificial notions 
about his own gifts and ability. He felt a keen re- 
sponsibility to the Creator who had intrusted him 
with gifts. He said one time: 

I know the very ordinary kind of man I am to fill 
this great office [President]. I know that my ideals are 
commonplace. I can only insist upon them as fundamental, 
for they are that. Not in the least doing anything great, 
I can try, and I am trying, to do my duty on the level 
where I am put, and so far as I can see the way, the whole 
of it. 

He was far more tractable than most people im- 
agined. 

The editor of the Metropolitan said that next to 
his intense "patriotism the thing we felt about the 
Colonel was his modesty and perfectly natural feel- 
ing of being on a footing of equality with everyone 
in the office from the office boy up." When it was 
suggested that an article on "Labor" was too long, 
he graciously and promptly tore up the first ten 
pages. 

Mr. Van Valkenburg told the writer : 

He was never satisfied with a speech, but would work 
it over again and again, after posting himself very care- 
fully on the subject. He never delivered a speech until he 
had submitted it to a group of friends, who often cut out 
long passages. He would heartily thank them and say the 
speech was greatly improved. 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 119 

^'Bill" Sewall told me, ''He would not argue at 
all but would own up immediately if in the wrong." 
Mr. Pinchot insisted that it did not hurt his pride 
to "reverse himself when found wrong." 

The Hon. Oscar Straus gave me an illustration of 
President Roosevelt's promptness in changing his 
mind when new and convincing evidence was pre- 
sented. Before Mr. Straus came in the Cabinet the 
President had openly and vigorously supported the 
bill to provide a literacy test for immigrants. Mr. 
Straus was opposed to the bill and gave, among 
others, the following reason : 

Some of the worst immigrants that enter our shores can 
read and write, while often the best can do neither. Many 
Europeans are illiterates because of bad economical con- 
ditions. When they have ambition, under those circum- 
stances, to come to America they usually aspire to secure 
an education and see to it that their children are promptly 
and properly educated. 

To prove this, he showed that there was more 
illiteracy among American born than among foreign 
born. When a strong Boston organization called 
upon the President, urging him to again back the 
bill, he told them that Mr. Straus had presented 
evidence that had caused him to change his mind 
and he withdrew his support. 

John Hay, while Secretary of State, wrote in his 
diary, November 20, 1904, that he had just gone over 
the President's message and made many suggestions 
and omissions, adding, "He accepted my ideas with 
that singular amiability and open-mindedness which 
forms so striking a contrast with the general idea 



120 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

of his brusque and arbitrary character" (Washburn, 
p. 118). 

Mr. Stoddard, his intimate adviser, during the 
trying last ten years of his life, when so many 
thought him stubborn, said to me: "I never met a 
man in public life who took advice as he did. In 
fact, he took it far too easily at times." He ap- 
proached the state which the Master approved when 
he said: ''Blessed are the meek, for they shall in- 
herit the earth," but the "meek" were not cringing 
crawlers. 

Lawrence Abbott, however, stresses a fact in which 
others agree when he says : 

I do not mean to give the impression that he altered his 
mind frequently. On matters of principle he could be as 
fixed as adamant. But in methods of putting a principle 
into effect he habitually sought counsel and was eager to 
adopt suggestions. 

He endeavored to find the best way to word and 
put into effect his deep-rooted convictions, which 
he seldom changed. Mr. Richberg, a party leader, a 
close associate in political matters, said: 

When I first engaged in intimate political work with 
Colonel Roosevelt in 1913, I was amazed to observe his 
modesty of judgment, his readiness to consult with others, 
his consideration for the opinions of less informed men, 
and his careful deliberation before taking action. 

Dr. Lambert related an incident of a speech which 
the President read to him one night : 

I told him, "You are using a sledge hammer to kill a fly. 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 121 

You would accomplish more if you used ridicule instead of 
abuse." We discussed this for some time and he failed to 
agree with me. The next morning he greeted me with, 
"Well, I accepted your suggestions and worked until 
3 A. M. to write the speech over." 

Soon after his installation as President he formed 
a "newspaper Cabinet," composed of correspondents 
with whom he discussed the most serious problems. 
They were pledged to secrecy and when a matter was 
"released" they agreed to treat it sympathetically. 
He wanted to get the viewpoint of the masses 
through the brains of these alert newspaper men. 

W. Emlen Koosevelt said to me: 

I once asked Theodore why he associated with so many 
scalawags such as I met at his house. He replied, "Yes, 
I know they are not flawless, but they have some noble 
traits and I want to get their viewpoint." 

He wanted to see the world through as many 
eyes as possible. Pastor and pugilist, politician and 
professional man, college folk and the untutored- 
all interpreted for him. 

He refused to accept special favors as due his office 
or his public position. For example, all firearms 
carried into Yellowstone Park were to be "sealed" 
to avoid use. The President promptly turned his 
over, but being recognized, the gatekeeper handed 
them back unsealed. But Mr. Roosevelt insisted 
that he be treated just as any other citizen, and his 
guns were sealed. 

He never put his own interests first— like his 
Lord he always sought the common good. 



122 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

On his return from Africa he received two thou- 
sand invitations to lecture in various places and for 
fabulous sums. But he saved himself instead for 
public service and refused all of these invitations. 
After the way was closed for him to fight in 
France an invitation from high officials came urging 
him to visit that land. If ovation-hungry, he rejected 
a feast, for he said : ''They would give me a great 
reception. ... I have a horror of being a spectator 
while other men are fighting." 

When the Rough Riders were organized, Secretary 
of War R. A. Alger, a loyal friend of Mr. Roosevelt, 
proposed that he be made colonel while Leonard 
Wood, who knew military tactics and could do the 
actual training, be made lieutenant-colonel. But he 
refused to accept an office he could not fill and went 
in instead as lieutenant-colonel. 

Mr. Roosevelt campaigned efficiently for Benjamin 
Harrison, who wanted to give him an undersecre- 
taryship in the State Department. But Blaine, the 
Secretary of State, whom he had once opposed, and 
who was unreconciled, refused to approve the plan. 
Only an obscure place on the unpopular Civil Service 
Commission was offered ; but he saw an opportunity 
to serve and did not hesitate a moment. Selfish pique 
had no place in his life; he took the humble place 
as quickly as the conspicuous if it was then his 
largest place of service. 

When the heaviest disappointment of his life came 
in the refusal of President Wilson to allow him to 
fight he immediately issued a statement to the men 
who had offered to enlist under him : 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 123 

As good American citizens we loyally obey the decision 
of the Commander-in-Chief of the American army and navy. 
The men who have volunteered will now consider them- 
selves absolved from all further connection with this move- 
ment. Our sole aim is to help in every way in the success- 
ful prosecution of the war, and we most heartily feel that 
no individual's personal interest should for one moment 
be considered save as it serves the general public interest. 



There is here no sulking or bitterness coming from 
poisoned pride. 

He did not require political agreement as a sign 
of ability as do some small, selfish politicians. Mr. 
Thayer was once embarrassed by the cordial friend- 
ship of his old classmate because he felt compelled 
to confess that he had not voted for him at the 
previous election. "Bill," said Mr. Koosevelt, "the 
man who can write The Life of Cavour can vote for 
anybody he pleases so far as I am concerned. What 
has your politics to do with my appreciation of your 
great book?" Another zealous supporter was pro- 
testing against his friendliness with Lodge while 
that senator was opposing some administration 
measure. Mr. Roosevelt replied, "I should talk to 
Lodge about books if we disagreed on the Ten Com- 
mandments." 

Governor Hadley, of Missouri, was a loyal sup- 
porter in the Chicago convention but refused to fol- 
low him out of the party. Mr. Roosevelt was big 
enough to recognize the Governor's unusual di- 
lemma and felt no blame for him when others could 
not excuse him. Dean Lewis, an eyewitness, tells 
us that when Hadley came to say good-by and to 



124 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

declare his alignment with Taft, all of the other men 
stood like graven images, not even noticing his pres- 
ence. But Mr. Roosevelt greeted him cordially and 
took him aside for a private talk. ''There was not a 
trace of resentment in his manner, and I do not think 
he felt resentment." 

He opened a window into his heart when he wrote 
his political adviser, Mr. Richberg: 

You really please me when you say that you do not be- 
lieve that I care for the political cost to myself. My dear 
Richberg, I think I can conscientiously say that I have 
always been willing to sacrifice my own political chances 
for a national object which I consider of sufficient weight. 

That was indeed the attitude of a sincere disciple 
of the Nazarene. He as rigidly enforced his ideas 
of justice when he was to suffer as he would when 
another was the victim. Through a peculiar pro- 
vision in the Massachusetts primary law, the eight 
delegates at large pledged to Mr. Roosevelt were 
elected, yet at the same time through the failure of 
Mr. Roosevelt's friends to vote on the subject of 
actual candidates the popular vote of the State, 
which the primary also provided for, favored Mr. 
Taft. Mr. Roosevelt immediately issued a statement 
saying that he would expect his eight delegates to 
follow the instructions of the popular vote and sup- 
port Mr. Taft. 

He seemed never to think of himself first. When 
his carriage was hit by a trolley in Massachusetts 
and a secret service man was killed, he looked first 
after the injured and then gave instructions to notify 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 125 

the Associated Press that the President was unin- 
jured, so that the possible fears of the people might 
be allayed. His own shin bone was so injured that 
he suffered pain and inconvenience from it for the 
rest of his life, but he said nothing of it at the time. 

During a friendly boxing bout with a cousin of 
Mrs. Roosevelt, while he was in the White House, 
a glancing blow extinguished the sight in one eye. He 
did not mention the matter for years, saying after- 
ward that he feared the knowledge of the mishap 
would make the young man feel badly. After an 
operation, in the spring of 1918, he lost the hearing 
of one ear, but the public did not know that. 

"Bill" Sewall said to me : 

He was never what I considered a sturdy man. His en- 
ergy and will carried him forward. He never thought of 
taking care of himself but just did what he wanted to do 
if it was a part of his day's work. But the time came 
when he taxed himself too greatly. He admitted to me 
that his South American trip was evidently a mistake — 
but that was stated confidentially. 

His self-forgetfulness is vividly shown in his 
South American sickness. A canoe was caught in 
the rocks, and he, working waist-deep in the water, 
injured the shin bone which had been hurt in the 
Massachusetts trolley wreck. Fever developed and 
he, "in his weakened condition, was attacked by a 
veritable plague of deep abscesses." He was so ill 
that he could not be moved, and since the provisions 
were rapidly diminishing and no supplies could be 
secured in the neighborhood, he seriously considered 
taking his own life rather than detain and endanger 



126 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

the whole party. But finally they moved with Mr. 
Roosevelt in a canoe covered with a canvas and so 
weak he could not splash water in his face. But 
Kermit wrote : ''He was invariably cheerful and in 
the blackest times ever ready with a joke. ... He 
gave no one any trouble." 

When he was shot at Milwaukee, while campaign- 
ing as the Progressive candidate for President, he 
at first sank back, but seeing the crowd struggling 
with his assailant, quickly forgot himself and aris- 
ing, said, "Do not hurt him, but bring him to me." 
Someone then urged him to go at once to the hos- 
pital ; but he insisted that the waiting crowd in the 
hall must first be considered and went there. When 
ready to speak he pulled his speech out of his pocket 
to find it perforated with the bullet. One hundred 
sheets of paper had probably saved his life. He 
was shocked for a moment as he recognized this 
fact, but quickly recovered and went on with his 
speech. He talked for an hour and a half while 
bleeding from a bullet in his breast which, by the 
way, he carried to his death. He was not, however, 
merely impulsive even in this, for his rare foresight 
was used even here, as is shown in a note to Henry 
White, former Ambassador to Italy and France, 
who called him "foolhardy" : 

You know, I didn't think I had been mortally wounded. 
If so, I would have bled from the lungs. But I coughed 
hard three times and put my hand to my mouth; as I did 
not find any blood, I . . . went on with my speech. 

He seemed to prei)are for everything. Mr. Van 
Valkenburg told me : 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 127 

He was attendin;; a celebration of his dear friend. Father 
Curran, at Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. The Father, Theo- 
dore, and I were riding in a motor through the cheering 
crowds. The President was standing up bowing to the 
crowd and singing a Negro ditty while he did so. Sud- 
denly a big fellow rushed up and jumping on the running 
board reached for Mr. Roosevelt. In a moment the Presi- 
dent caught him and by jiu jitsu, threw him off in a 
flash. I asked him, "How could you act so quickly?" He 
replied, "I think out and talk over with Mrs. Roosevelt 
such possible attacks in advance and am ready when they 
come. I was thus also prepared for the shooting at Mil- 
waukee." 

As an outstanding leader he recognized his indebted- 
ness to the public and so safeguarded himself. 

In the Milwaukee speech with death facing him 
and even while increasing the risk by speaking, he 
said: ''I tell you with absolute truth, I am not 
thinking of my own life, I am not thinking of my 
own success. I am thinking only of the success of 
this great cause." Continuing, he said : 

I do not care a rap about being shot, not a rap. I have 
had a good many experiences in my time, and this is only 
one of them. What I do care for is my country. I wish 
I were able to impress upon our people the duty to feel 
strongly, but to speak truthfully of their opponents. 
I say now that I have never said on the stump one word 
against any opponent that I could not substantiate, 
nothing that, looking back. I would not say again.^ 

Only the poise that comes from unselfish service 
inspired by the faith in the Master could make such 
a declar ation while facing death. 

^Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, Lawrence Abbott, p. 297. 



128 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He depreciated the credit given him for his self- 
forgetfulness when shot, and said: 

But a good soldier or sailor, or for the matter of that, 
even a civilian accustomed to hard and hazardous pursuits, 
a deep-sea fisherman, or railway man, or cowboy, or lum- 
berjack, or miner, would normally act as I acted without 
thinking anything about it. I believe half the men in my 
regiment at the least would have acted just as I acted. 
Think how many Bulgars during the last month have 
acted in just the same fashion and never even had their 
names mentioned in bulletins. 



He immediately remembered his future engage- 
ments and recalled ex-Senator Beveridge to take his 
speaking dates. He affirmed that now, as in the 
sixties, it is "not important whether one leader lives 
or dies. It is important only that the cause shall 
live or win. Tell the people not to worry about me, 
for if I do go down another will take my place." 
And again: "If one soldier who happens to carry 
the flag is stricken, another will take it from his 
hands and carry it on." 

Is it any wonder that the beckoning and inspiring 
ideal of such a life was Abraham Lincoln? When 
he was inaugurated as President in 1904 he wore 
a ring containing a lock of Lincoln's hair, a new 
evidence of his finely tempered sentimental nature. 
He had received it with a letter from John Hay, who 
assured him that the hair in the ring had been taken 
from the head of Abraham Lincoln by Dr. Taft on 
the night of the assassination and that he himself 
had received it from the son of Dr. Taft. He as- 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 129 

sured him further, as he urged him to wear it, that 
Mr. Roosevelt was ^'one of the men who most thor- 
oughly understood and appreciated Lincoln." Mr. 
Lincoln's and Mr. Roosevelt's monograms were 
both engraved on the ring. 

John Hay knew Lincoln as well as any man 
through his intimate acquaintance as his secretary, 
and he knew Mr. Roosevelt from his youth up; 
hence the tribute was a high one, and its full effect 
was not lost, for afterward Mr. Roosevelt, referring 
to the fact that the ring was on his finger when the 
Chief Justice administered the oath of office taken 
when he was sworn in as President of the United 
States, said he often reminded John Hay that 
the presence of the ring at that time deeply im- 
pressed him. He affirmed that it led him to secretly 
resolve to constantly interpret the Constitution in 
the spirit of Abraham Lincoln as a ^'document which 
put human rights above property rights when the 
two conflicted." 

A little later, he explained to Henry F. Pritchett 
that the vision of Lincoln greatly affected as he 
seemed to see him in the "different rooms and halls." 
He explained that "so far as one who is not a great 
man" could do so he modeled after the "great" 
Lincoln and tried to follow his policy. Then he 
bursts out in a wish for Lincoln's invariable 
"equanimity. I try my best not to give expression to 
irritation but sometimes I do get deeply irritated." 

He was so absolutely true to his convictions and 
so earnestly supported them, no matter whether suc- 
cess or failure faced him, that he appeared to some 



130 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

practical men as stubborn. Mr. McGrath, his secre- 
tary during the "Progressive" days, told me : 

Mr. Roosevelt knew before campaigning in 1912 that he 
would be defeated. Yet he kept a happy and hopeful spirit, 
affirming that his party was right. Though he carried a 
large personal vote, few others were elected, and he knew 
that this meant the ultimate collapse of the party. Never- 
theless, he loyally spoke for the local candidates in 1914 
as a personal debt to them. During all of these disappoint- 
ments he showed no irritability and never became sour. 
Though blow came after blow, yet he was never even 
groggy. 

He was standing on the Rock of Ages and so stood 
firmly. 

He never — even for the sake of harmony — "swal- 
lowed" his convictions. Even after returning to the 
Republican Party, he retained his Progressive social 
program. Mr. Van Valkenburg was called to the 
hospital to criticise his "keynote" Maine speech in 
1918. The doctor allotted him fifteen minutes but 
Mr. Roosevelt held him for an hour while he talked 
over the speech. When it was completed, "Van" 
found that it contained all the items of social plans 
contained in the original Progressive j)latform and 
wrote Mr. Roosevelt that the reactionaries would 
never approve it. But later, he wrote "Van" that he 
had submitted the speech to three noted standpat 
Republican leaders who had opposed him as a Pro- 
gressive and added, "The joke is that they approved 
every word of the speech without a single sugges- 
tion." 

It is possible to be egotistically stubborn about 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 131 

simplicity and a much boasted "democracy." One 
can be as objectionable in ill-fitting clothes and crude 
manners as in the habiliments of a fop. Mr. Koose- 
velt accepted the customs of English royalty like a 
gracious gentleman while among them in an official 
capacity. He was the representative of the United 
States at the funeral of Edward VII ; and his secre- 
tary, fearing he would object to some of the proposed 
trappings and pomp, called him into conference 
when his representatives could not agree about 
"parade" details. He replied : 

Why, Mott, I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I am 
here as an ambassador, not to do what I like but what the 
English people like, as the contribution of my country to 
the respect which the world is paying to the memory of 
the King. If the people want m© to, I'll wear a pink coat 
and green-striped trousers!* 

But there was no flunkeyism about his own home. 
He did not even have a "butler" or a "footman." 
Rosy-cheeked girls answered the door, while colored 
Charley Lee handled the "reins" or the "wheel." An 
old-fashioned cook — no foreign dignitary — prepared 
the meals. 

A "good-fighting man" General advised Mr. Roose- 
velt, when he entered the Spanish War, to get a pair 
of black-top boots for full dress, as they were "very 
effective on hotel piazzas and in parlors." He af- 
firmed : "I did not intend to be in any hotel. . . . 
I had no full-dress uniform, nothing but my service 
uniform." 



^Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, Lawrence Abbott, p. 297. 



132 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

But when the standing of his country was at 
stake he could insist on the smallest details of social 
etiquette. At a White House state dinner, Holleben, 
the German ambassador, suggested that Prince 
Henry, as a Hohenzollern representing the Kaiser, 
should walk out to dinner first. Mr. Roosevelt re- 
plied, curtly, ''No person living precedes the Presi- 
dent of the United States in the White House." 

He always longed for the quiet of home life, which 
many believed he did not covet. He wrote Kermit, 
after the Progressive defeat, that while people would 
not believe that he had not been so happy for years 
as since the election, yet it was true. He enjoyed 
being free from engagements and having the oppor- 
tunity to "stay out here with mother." 

He never put too large confidence in popularity. 
He tasted its highest tide on his return from his 
African trip. It was my privilege to witness the 
hilarious and almost universal welcome given him 
in New York at that time. The whole country ac- 
claimed him. But he kept his head and said : ''It is 
a kind of hysteria. They will be throwing rotten 
eggs at me soon." He was right. Very soon the 
"man on the street" who had a little while before 
shouted friendly acclamations, now talked about 
"the poor back-number who thought he was God Al- 
mighty." At this low tide of popularity a man put 
up an autographed photo of Mr. Roosevelt at auction 
and had difficulty in getting twenty-five cents for it. 
Lord Morley, after his visit to America, sent back 
such a laudatory note that Roosevelt was embar- 
rassed. Morley wrote: 



A HUMBLE SELF-CONFIDENCE 133 

My dear fellow, do you know the two most extraordinary 
things I have seen in your country? Niagara Falls and the 
President of the United States — both great wonders of 
nature. 

Mr. Koosevelt feared such praise would be misunder- 
stood and bring a reaction, so he said about it : 

That was a very nice thing of Morley to say, so long as 
it is confined to one or two of my intimate friends who 
won't misunderstand it! Just at the moment, people are 
speaking altogether too well of me. . . . Reaction is per- 
fectly certain to come under such circumstances, and then 
people will revenge themselves for feeling humiliated for 
having said too much on one side by saying too much on 
the other. 

And discussing his popularity in the midst of its 
highest tide in 1906, before he had met any reverses, 
he reminds a friend in a letter that he is not think- 
ing about his popularity, for he felt that if he was 
at that time popular, it would not be long before he 
became unpopular. He concludes : "I am not pay- 
ing heed to public opinion. I am paying heed to the 
public interest.'' 

Publicity always brings a dangerous experience. 
It will search out all the weakness of habit or trait 
in the individual. Limelight is likely to go to the 
head. It may become an opiate, and when gone may 
drive one to foolish sensationalism for its recovery 
or cause one to sit in soured and dispirited idleness. 
But Mr. Koosevelt proved his unegotistical self- 
confidence by such a devotion to his country that no 
victory could overturn or no defeat sour him. 

Through all conditions and with all available aid 



134 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

he persevered to bring in better wsijs and days. He 
gathered all available evidence — he valued advice 
as he understood its source, and he viewed all sides 
before he came to a decision. But when he had 
reached a decision, he proceeded with patience and 
perseverance to carry it out with a self-confidence 
that did not question his ability or the ultimate out- 
come. That is the mark of a Christian leader who 
believes in the call of God and the sufficient *'grace" 
that accompanies the call. It is the confidence of 
Paul, who affirmed, "I can do all things through 
Christ who strengtheneth me." 



d 



CHAPTER VII 
A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 

"The highest type of philanthropy is that which springs 
from the feeling of brotherhood, and which, therefore, 
rests on the self-respecting, healthy basis of mutual obliga- 
tion and common effort." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

A man that hath friends must show himself friendly. 
—Prov, 18. 24. 

IN a letter never published, and loaned to the 
writer by Mr. Bishop, Mr. Roosevelt differenti- 
ates between "sentiment" and sentimentality in 
answering a charge that he discounted both : 

I regard sentiment as the great antithesis of sentimen- 
tality, and to substitute sentiment for sentimentality in my 
speech would directly invert my meaning. I abhor senti- 
mentality, and, on the other hand, think no man is worth 
his salt who isn't profoundly influenced by sentiment and 
who doesn't shape his life in accordance with a high ideal. 

Some German sympathizers mistook Mr. Roose- 
velt's association with the Kaiser and so tried in a 
personal visit to smother his intelligence by appeal- 
ing to a blind admiration and thus win his support 
for their cause. Mr. Roosevelt acknowledged the 
courtesies shown him by the Kaiser on his visit to 
Germany and admitted that he corresponded with 
him but concluded, "Indeed, sirs, my relations with 

135 



136 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

the Kaiser have been exactly the same as with the 
King of the Belgians. Good afternoon." 

Sentiment is clean, strong affection backed by in- 
telligence and fed by respect. It is the basis of 
patriotism, happy life, and friendship. Without it 
one is marked as either heartless or brainless. It 
does not make one soft or mushy but gives poise and 
ballast to the powers. The Man of Galilee loved 
John and wept over Jerusalem, but he also called 
the religious leaders ^^whited sepulchers" and lashed 
the grafting dealers out of the Temple. Theodore 
Koosevelt was a consistent, tender, and affectionate 
friend, but he too was a fearless assailant of evil 
and an ardent advocate of righteousness. Christ's 
disciples normally illustrate both traits. 

Mr. Roosevelt always kept his feelings susceptible 
to impressions ; he was never hard. He quickly saw 
the pathos of the Negro freedmen who fought with 
Jackson in 1812, "who were to die bravely as free- 
men only that their brethren might live on ignobly 
as slaves." They were to "shed their blood for the 
flag that symbolized to their kind not freedom but 
bondage." For at that time the United States per- 
mitted slavery. 

He was not averse to expressing his affection for 
his friends. President Butler told me that in private 
he was exuberant in his manifestations. After say- 
ing of Mr. Riis that, next to his father, he was the 
"best man I have ever known," he added, "I learned 
to love him like a brother." 

The newspaper men were all knit to him by genu- 
ine affection. A taxicab driver overheard one news- 




Undenv 



A FAMOUS TRIO AT CHAUTAUQUA. NEW YORK: 
JACOB A. RIIS (ON LEFT), THEODORE ROOSE- 
VELT, AND (BISHOP) JOHN H. VINCENT. 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 137 

paper man at Sagamore Hill say to another on the 
day of the funeral, ^'Brace up, Bill, we'll soon be 
in town." ''Shut up, you fool," blubbered the other. 
''You're crying yourself just as hard as I am." 

Frank Crane said of Mr. Roosevelt, "He was a 
friend, conceived of as a friend in a passionate and 
personal way as no other statesman in American 
history except Lincoln." He had learned of Him who 
said that if one did not love his brother whom ''he 
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
seen ?" 

He drew friends to him as honey-hearted flowers 
do the bees. He fellowshiped with them as naturally 
as boys flock together in droves. His magnetism was 
friendliness aglow — the cold hearted never move 
others. Said Henry A. Wise Wood: 

As I stood by the open grave I did not think of Roose- 
velt the soldier, the orator, the author, the naturalist, the 
explorer, the statesman, the leader of men, or the former 
President of the greatest of republics. I could think of 
him only as a friend and brother in whom elements were 
so mixed. 

He was deeply moved by others' sorrows. When 
Deal Dow, the foster son and nephew of "Bill" 
Sewall and Mr. Roosevelt's partner in Dakota, died, 
he wrote "Bill" immediately and said, "He was one 
of the men whom I felt proud to have as a friend." 
He then proceeds, "His sincerity, . . . his courage, 
his gentleness to his wife, his loyalty to his friends 
all made him one whose loss must be greatly 
mourned." 



138 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

While on his Yellowstone Park trip with John 
Burroughs, George Marvin, one of the teamsters, 
died. When he returned to Mammoth Hot Springs, 
the President looked up the young woman to whom 
the teamster had been ^^engaged" and tried to com- 
fort her. He "sat a long time with her, in her home, 
offering his sympathy and speaking words of con- 
solation," wrote Mr. Burroughs. 

The War Department, to save the twenty-five dol- 
lars, the cost of cabling, had issued an order that the 
names of soldiers wounded and killed in the Philip- 
pines should be sent by mail. The mothers of all the 
soldiers were thus kept steadily anxious. Mr. Riis 
determined to correct the matter and, going to 
Oyster Bay, found a dinner party arranged but he 
was immediately invited to participate. When the 
guests were seated, he engaged in a discussion so 
that during a lull the President might hear the case. 
When the President thus learned the facts, he or- 
dered General Corbin, who wanted to wait until he 
returned to Washington, to issue the order arranging 
for names of the wounded and killed to be cabled 
promptly, saying, "These mothers gave the best they 
had to their country and deserve every considera- 
tion." 

The traits required in his friends were not speci- 
fied, but they were nevertheless very real and, fully 
realizetl, were such as were commonly found in only 
real disciples of the Great Teacher, for nearly all of 
his intimate friends were either active churchmen or 
else were raised in a distinctly Christian home. The 
following were loyal churchmen : George W. Perkins, 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 139 

Gifford Pinchot, Senators Beveridge and Lodge, Gen- 
eral Leonard Wood, Governor Henry Allen, Ray- 
mond Robbing, and Dr. Alexander Lambert. All his 
secretaries were raised in vital religious homes, 
while most of them were active members of the 
church. 

Mr. McGrath assured me that criticism by clergy- 
men hurt Mr. Roosevelt more than that from any 
other source. He felt that they '^should be more 
careful in circulating poorly authenticated rumors. 
He felt he had a right to expect hearty support from 
them in his hard fight for righteousness." He had 
many highly valued friends in the ministry. 

He wrote the English ambassador that he would 
not choose the companionship of those merely known 
in high finance as compared with Professor Bury, or 
Admirals Peary or Evans, or Rhodes, the historian, 
or Selons, the big game hunter. Continuing, he 
says : 

The very luxurious grossly material life of the average 
multimillionaire whom I know does not appeal to me in 
the least. From the standpoint of real pleasure I should 
selfishly prefer my old-time ranch on the Little Missouri 
to anything in Newport! 

He required richness of soul and recognized the 
Father's son behind a grimy face as quickly as in a 
home of culture. 

Dr. Lambert told me that Mr. Roosevelt had 
plenty of temper but he was in absolute control of 
it. ^'I have watched him work on an adversary with 
such infinite patience and persistency that I would 



140 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

turn away with disgust and afterward say, ^Theo- 
dore, why didn't you give that man a piece of your 
mind and let him go?' He would reply, 'Then he 
would go away to oppose me, but now he is with 
us.' " Lawrence Abbott said, "While in controversy, 
he often got 'mad,' . . . but he never stayed 'mad' 
nor cherished resentments of any kind." At Chicago, 
Mr. Thayer says, people were closeted with him 
constantly, and every little while he would come 
out into the reception room and speak to the 
throng there. "No matter what the news, no 
matter how early or late the hour, he was always 
cheerful." 

A relative once said, "I have never in my life 
heard a cruel word from his lips. He dislikes and 
despises many people, but even when he wants to 
annihilate them he is never mean or cruel or petty 
about it." 

W. Emlen Roosevelt told me that his aged mother 
was cheered every Sunday after church during the 
summer because the President of the United States 
had time to call upon her. He added : 

My mother was a Quakeress, very devout and an earnest 
student of the Bible, and, like Theodore, she used her 
imagination in the study of it. They always had vigorous 
discussions about Bible incidents, verses, and interpreta- 
tions. Each would frequently convince the other. 

What a beautiful thoughtfulness was shown in this 
call! He displayed the same kindly Christ-like 
thoughtfulness everywhere. 

Charles W. Thompson, a newspaper correspondent 



I 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 141 

on his campaigning train in 1912, accidentally cut 
his finger while opening a mucilage bottle and in- 
fection threatened bad results. At Portland, Oregon, 
Mr. Roosevelt was leading the procession through 
the hotel toward the great banquet room, when, said 
Mr. Thompson to me : 

He spied me, and holding the whole throng up, pushed 
through the crowd, put his hand affectionately on my shoul- 
der and said: "Charley, how is the hand? I am anxious 
about it. Don't you think you had better return home?" 
He talked with me, a humble newspaper man with a hurt 
hand, for several minutes while the whole line was held 
up. Was it any wonder we loved him? 

When Senator Hanna was taken ill the President 
was under his heaviest burden of duties, but he 
slipped away nevertheless to make a call on the sick 
man. The Senator was deeply moved and wrote a 
letter of warm appreciation for the personal call 
from so busy a man. He assured him that such 
attention ^'were drops of kindness that are good for 
a fellow," for they "touch a tender spot." 

Jacob A. Riis, once an emigrant tramp, though of 
a fine Danish family, was being entertained at 
Christmas breakfast in the White House when he 
happened to mention his sick mother in Denmark 
longing for her boy. Mrs. Roosevelt, with tender 
solicitude, said, "Theodore, let us cable over our love 
to her." And then said Mr. Riis: 

Consternation struck my Danish home village when a 
cable from the President of the United States was received, 
which read: 



142 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"The White House, December 25, 1902. 
"Mrs. Riis, Ribe, Denmark. 

"Your son is breakfasting with us. We send you our 
loving sympathy. 

"Theodore and Edith Roosevelt." 

He was always sensitive to the comfort of his 
friends and as gentle as his Master. Mr. Riis had 
just recovered from a long sick spell when he visited 
Oyster Bay. Previous to his illness he easily kept 
up with the long strides of the President. They 
started out for a walk, but Mr. Riis fell behind and 
the President, suddenly remembering his friend's 
long illness, dropped back and Mr. Riis says, "took 
my arm, walked very slowly, telling me something 
with great earnestness to cover his remorse." At 
another time, Mr. Riis wore a medal given him by 
his king, at a great diplomats' dinner, but for some 
strange social reason no one else wore a medal. The 
President, noticing Mr. Riis' embarrassment, came 
over and pressing his arm affectionately said, "I 
am so glad that you honored me by wearing your 
medal." 

This same trait is illustrated by his treatment 
of visitors to the AYhite House. Colonel W. H. 
Crook recounts the visit of Ezra Meeker to the 
White House, accompanied by his prairie schooner 
drawn by oxen, in which he had spent two years in 
traveling from Tacoma, Washington. The old man, 
once wealthy, had lost his fortune. President Roose- 
velt went out to the wagon, bareheaded on a crisp 
November day, to look over the outfit with Mr. 
Meeker. He watched the collie dog go through his 



A COUKTEOUS CHKISTIAN FRIEND 143 

tricks. He met the wife, "and the woman in the 
wagon was made to feel by his courteous cordiality 
that he felt it an honor to meet her.'' 

Mr. McGrath said to me, "Mr. Roosevelt never 
showed any smallness in success or failure — he took 
both alike — he had no feet of clay. It was not true 
in his case that 'No man is a hero to his valet.' " Mr. 
Loeb added : "So many thought that Mr. Roosevelt 
was ruthless and dictatorial. He was not but was 
the most considerate of men." 

He was genuinely worthy of the "Blessed" which 
was promised to the "meek," for he was never pre- 
tentious, officious or self assertive. 

Mr. Riis describes a farmer and daughter who were 
viewing the pictures in Governor Roosevelt's wait- 
ing room when he arrived. Instead of speak- 
ing to the folks waiting to see him, he walked over 
to the farmer and acted as guide and then shook 
hands with him as he left without making himself 
known. Then he turned to the waiting politicians 
and dealt with them according to their deserts. 
Again, while riding in an elevated train, he arose 
to give a working girl his seat but would not allow 
Mr. Riis to tell her who he was. One day at his 
Metropolitan Magazine office, a lady was ushered in 
with a letter of introduction from a friend. He read 
the letter and then, since no one was waiting to see 
him, for one half hour he talked about the sins of 
the administration at Washington. Finally the lady 
said, "That is interesting, but when can I see Colonel 
Roosevelt?" He told the incident on himself glee- 
fully a few minutes later. 



144 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

A young friend of mine arranged to give his grand- 
father a treat by showing him the house where his 
idol, Theodore Roosevelt, lived. But when they ar- 
rived the gate was closed. He walked up to the 
house and asked a servant if he could not bring his 
aged grandfather into the grounds. Mr. Roosevelt 
overheard the conversation and came out to meet 
the party. The young man introduced all the group 
save one, when Mr. Roosevelt with perfect ease said, 
"I have not met this gentleman.'' It was the chauf- 
feur. There was no acting; it was only the spon- 
taneous outspeaking of his nature. He treated all 
alike — as common members of God's family. 

Mr. Roosevelt recognized no ^'blue-blooded" su- 
premacy — only the red blood of high endeavor gave 
standing with him. He mingled freely with all 
types and conditions of people in a genuinely broth- 
erly way in order that he might learn from and 
help all. 

Mr. Roosevelt was once asked why he was so 
popular with his soldiers and replied, *'I do not 
know except that I always slept with my men in the 
trenches." Mr. Cheney, his long-time neighbor, ven- 
turing an explanation of his grip on the people, con- 
tinues : "He never permitted a letter to go unan- 
swered." He was by handclasp and correspondence 
so much in touch with the people that "when he ap- 
peared before a crowd he was looked upon as a 
personal friend." "And when receiving visitors he 
gave the same hearty consideration to his gardener 
at Sagamore Hill that he would the most prominent 
visitor." 



i 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 145 

When Mr. Roosevelt became police commissioner, 
he lived with the police just as intimately as he did 
with his soldiers. One of them said, ^'He made me 
feel that he would sooner be seen in the company of 
me and my kind than in the company of ambassa- 
dors and kings." A captain asserted : 

Every man who really tried to do right, or, having gone 
crooked, reformed and showed he was trying to do right, 
always received a fair chance. He detested cowardice and 
shirking and the milk-and-water man, but he always stuck 
to the man who proved he was doing or trying to do his 
job.^ 

He came into a group of woodsmen in Maine, many 
of them old and some not even able to write their 
own names ; but he was soon one of them, said "Bill" 
Sewall. He immediately found '^the real man in 
very simple men. He didn't look for a brilliant 
man." He took them as they were. Mr. Roosevelt 
greatly enjoyed his Masonic lodge, where "Brother 
Doughty," the gardener on a neighboring estate, 
was Worshipful Master. "In the lodge he was over 
me, though I was President, and it was good for him 
and good for me." His "Master" mingled so nat- 
urally with his townsfolk that they called Him "the 
carpenter." 

In the same way Mr. Roosevelt tells us Mrs. Roose- 
velt belonged to a church society which she fre- 
quently entertained at Sagamore Hill and even 
several times at the White House. 



^From The Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 167, 168, by Herman Hage- 
dorn. Pubhshed by Harper & Brothers. 



146 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"The brakeman's wife or the butcher's wife" are 
not distinguished as such. The "guild," he tells us, 
has no "social rank" because they have a common 
social interest. 

And that was to render service in the name of 
mankind's Great Elder Brother. 

Senator Lodge well said that he had "a breadth 
of human sympathy as wide as the world, limited by 
neither creed nor race. . . . He was equally at ease 
in the Sorbonne or addressing a group of men in a 
mining town." Mrs. Robinson gave an unconscious 
testimony to his understanding of the people when 
she told the following: 

I will always remember the workman who approached 
me one day and said to me: "I want to shalte hands with 
you. You are the sister of my best friend. I have never 
met Colonel Roosevelt but he is nevertheless my best friend. 
I knew that if ever I wanted to write to him for advice he 
would answer." 

He had absolutely no sympathy with attacks on 
any race or creed. He greatly offended the South by 
entertaining Booker T. Washington, a Negro, at din- 
ner. He placed in his Cabinet the only Hebrew who 
has ever held that position. He, like Woodrow Wil- 
son, was one of the few noted men who had a Roman 
Catholic private secretary and defended him against 
all attacks. He was much exercised because Taft, 
as a Unitarian, was read out of the orthodox group. 

In his early days a young men's Republican Club 
of which he was a member proposed to blackball a 
high-grade Jew of good family. Mr. Roosevelt heard 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 147 

of it and reminded them that they were there as Re- 
publicans and Americans and ^'to exclude a man 
because he is a Jew is not decent." He affirmed that 
as soon as race and creed came in he would quit. Mr. 
Riis reports an auditor as saying: "Roosevelt was 
pale with anger. The Club sat perfectly still under 
the lashing." There was no blackball after he had 
finished. 

The first skirmish of the Rough Riders resulted in 
eight killed, and Mr. Roosevelt gloried in the true 
democracy shown in those who died, for all classes 
were represented. In one grave were placed "In- 
dian and cowboy, miner, packer and college athlete," 
one from the lonely West without noted ancestry 
and others from the noted families of "Stuyvesants 
and Fishes." They had been equal in "daring and 
loyalty." They illustrated the absence of classism 
and the spirit of unity in our nation. 

He hoped to preserve the same spirit of democracy 
and remove any possible class chasm by universal 
military training, for he said : 

I want to see Mrs. Vanderbilt's son and Mrs. Astor's son 
with Pat and Jim of Telegraph Hill, sleeping under the 
same dog-tent and eating the same food. I want to see the 
officers selected from among them on the strict basis of 
merit without regard to anything else. Then we will have 
a democratic system. 

Many wondered how he was able to secure the con- 
servative Elihu Root for his Cabinet. Mr. Root was 
often assailed, and once Mr. Roosevelt defended him 
by showing that he gave up a law practice of flOO,- 



148 ROOSEVELT'S FvELIGION 

000 a year to enter the Cabinet, which sacrifice would 
amount to one half million dollars at the end of the 
term if he remained that long. Continuing, Mr. 
Roosevelt said: "He has worked so as to almost 
wear himself out. I am obliged continually to try 
to get him to ease up and to persuade him to go rid- 
ing with me." 

Mr. Roosevelt found great joy in sealing the truth 
of his assertion that in Christian America one could 
climb from the lowest place to the highest. As 
President, therefore, he found great satisfaction in 
raising successively Young and Chaffee to be lieu- 
tenant-generals. 

When General Young, who was then retired, found 
that General Chaffee was to hold the place once filled 
by him, he sent his three stars and a note that they 
were presented by "Private Young to Private Chaf- 
fee." The two began together in the ranks and "each 
had grown gray in a lifetime of honorable service 
under the flag, and each closed his active career in 
command of the army." 

Mr. Roosevelt never forgot old friends in high or 
low estate. "Bill" Sewall had not seen Mr. Roose- 
velt for sixteen years when he came to Bangor after 
succeeding William McKinley as President. The 
modest backwoodsman would not himself reopen the 
fellowship but came to town and remained within 
reach. When President Roosevelt came out on the 
hotel balcony to speak, his first word was a request 
for someone to find "Bill" Sewall and bring him 
to the hotel. The President had a long and hilarious 
visit with him in a private room, talking over old 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 149 

times, and the association again became intimate. 
A week later ''Bill" got a letter thanking his wife 
and daughter for ''some hunting socks that they knit 
for him." In the same letter "Bill" was invited to 
visit him in Washington. "Bill" and wife and his 
two older children, their married daughter and hus- 
band and the grandchild went. They were met by 
an "aide," comfortably located, and then went to 
the White House, to find the President out horseback 
riding. Finally his quick step in the hall was recog- 
nized and coming into the room in his riding clothes, 
"Bill" said, "It seemed as though these sixteen years 
that lay between had never been and we were all 
back in the happy ranch days again." The President 
took "Bill" all over the White House and was told 
that he had a "pretty good camp." Mrs. Roosevelt 
then guided them about the city to see the sights. 
"Bill," noticing the embarrassment of his "women 
folks" when people looked at them in the President's 
box at the theater that evening, "thought it was 
perfectly natural — the people had found something 
green from the country." 

"Bill" told me that when the President was inau- 
gurated his whole family came down again. Gifford 
Pinchot, the cultured college graduate and man of 
wealth, and "Bill" both told me of a luncheon given 
to thirty of Mr. Roosevelt's most intimate friends 
the day before he relinquished the Presidency, for 
both of them were there. Mr. Pinchot told me that 
busy as the President and Mrs. Roosevelt were 
while preparing to leave the White House, they did 
not forget during the last days to send each friend 



150 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

an intimately personal gift to remind them of the 
association at Washington. 

His friendship for the newspaper men was not of- 
ficial but very genuine. Once when the Illinois Bar 
Association gave a banquet they excluded the news- 
paper men, said Mr. Leary. As soon as Mr. Roose- 
velt learned about it he told the toastmaster that 
these ^^boys" were in his "party" and he withdrew 
to eat with them in the grill below. And he only 
returned when the committee of arrangements apolo- 
gized and provided for the newspaper men. 

Mr. Roosevelt was not a mere "election-time" 
friend. He wrote "Mr. Dooley" (Peter Finley 
Dunne) one time that "if a man is good enough for 
me to profit by his services before election, he is good 
enough for me to do what I can for him after elec- 
tion." And it didn't make any difference to him 
whether the name was "Casey or Schwartzmeister, 
or Van Rensselaer, or Peabody." The last two had 
no right to lord it over the other two; all were 
equally Americans. 

After the nomination of Justice Hughes Mr. Roose- 
velt gave careful consideration to the matter and 
decided to support him. Some Progressives imag- 
ined that they would display unusual loyalty to 
Mr. Roosevelt by helping to defeat Hughes. The 
Philadelphia North American, always a loyal Roose- 
velt supporter, assured its readers that such actions 
had no sympathy from Mr. Roosevelt. It went on 
to show that the ex-President understood that Jus- 
tice Hughes' election would mean that if he failed 
as President, a Democrat would succeed him, and if 



A COUETEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 151 

he had a successful administration he would be re- 
elected. Hence Mr. Roosevelt would, in either cir- 
cumstance, not have another chance until 1924, 
when he would be sixty-six, too old to expect a 
nomination. Then the editorial concluded that, in 
spite of these facts : 

He is giving his utmost endeavors to insure the election 
of Mr. Hughes, which means the definite closing of the 
door of opportunity upon himself. A Progressive who re- 
jects this example adopts a strange means of proving his 
fidelity. 

Almost in the first mail, the following letter came 
to the editor; 

Dear Van: 

Your editorial, "Last Thoughts," summed up the whole 
case, as only The North American can do it. What you 
said about me touched me deeply and pleased me much. 
I shall keep the editorial: you speak of me as I should like 
to have my children's children believe I was entitled to be 
spoken of. 

He illustrated Christian fidelity in his pledges. He 
was very leal to the "home" folks and town. The 
Rev. Charles R. Woodson, once the pastor of the 
Methodist church at Oyster Bay, wrote me that be- 
fore Mr. Roosevelt went abroad he promised on his 
return to lecture with stereopticon pictures about 
his African trip. He gave it as promised at the 
Opera House and repeated it the next day for the 
children. "He refused to give this lecture anywhere 
else," wrote Mr. Woodson, "though offered |4,000 a 
night to do so. He said to me at his home at the 



152 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

time, 'This is my compliment to the people of my 
own town' and he added: 'Any time I can be of 
service to the churches of Oyster Bay, do not hesitate 
at all to call upon me. I will be ready always to 
render that service to the extent of my ability.' " 

Mr. Cheney assures us that the "servants" were 
solicitously cared for. One time Noah Seaman, the 
superintendent of the estate, whom Mr. Roosevelt 
treated "almost like a brother both in public and 
private," was critically ill. Mr. Cheney notified the 
President of the fact and he sent a specialist from 
Washington to treat him "and his prompt action at 
the time probably saved Seaman's life." 

His Rough Riders always held an unusually warm 
place in his heart. Senator Bard took a Californian 
over to see the President and started to present him 
when Mr. Roosevelt cried out, "Why, hello, Jim! 
How are you?" and he grasped the man's hand 
heartily. Then they talked for a time; and as they 
went out, the President called out, "Come up to din- 
ner to-night, just as you are." Then after a pause, 
as though it was an afterthought, he shouted, "And 
be sure to bring Bard with you." 

When the President visited Yellowstone Park 
with John Burroughs he arranged to stop over in 
the little town of Medora, near which lay his old 
ranch. He delivered an address and then men, 
women, and children shook hands while he called 
many of them by name. One old resident was 
greeted: "How well I remember you! You once 
mended my gunlock for me — put on a new hammer." 
The old man was delighted. 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 153 

Everyone in trouble felt free to go to Mr. Roose- 
velt. One of his Rough Riders wrote the President 
that he was "in trouble" because he had shot an- 
other "lady" while he was shooting at his "wife," 
He made no other explanations. Evidently the 
damage was slight and later the fellow promised to 
cease drinking and never drank again. Mr. Roose- 
velt lent another Rough Rider two hundred dollars 
for lawyer's fees after he had been arrested for 
horse-stealing. Very soon the money was returned 
with the explanation, "The trial never came off. We 
elected our district-attorney." The President 
laughed, for he then understood as he had surmised 
— that it was politics and not real guilt that landed 
his friend in jail. 

Whenever he gave financial aid he used another 
individual as a medium to save embarrassment to 
the one helped and pledged secrecy from the one 
representing him. Mr. Cheney recounts a time when 
he received a letter from the President, asking him 
to investigate someone who had made an appeal for 
help, because it was Mr. Roosevelt's custom never to 
refuse anyone who was actually in need of aid. He 
then specifies by saying : 

If the members of a once unfortunate Oyster Bay family 
are living, they will now know that the groceries, coal, and 
rent money provided for them came through funds furnished 
by a President of the United States. 

It may also be stated that a certain lady very close to 
the Roosevelts sent a check once a month, through my wife, 
for three successive years, to pay the rent of a poor woman 
residing in Oyster Bay. 



154 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Mr. Cheney further tells of the destruction of two 
houses in Oyster Bay by fire. Mr. Roosevelt, hearing 
of it, sent for his two neighbors and lent them the 
money without interest, to rebuild their homes. 

He was under very severe criticism because he 
would not dismiss General Smith without a trial 
when it was rumored that he had issued an order in 
the Philippines to ^'kill and burn and make a howling 
wilderness of Samar." In due time he was tried, 
convicted, and discharged in an orderly way. Dur- 
ing the scorching fire of abuse Professor Albert Bush- 
nell Hart wrote a friendly letter to Mr. Roosevelt, 
who replied that in the midst of "the well-nigh ter- 
rible responsibilities" he must naturally lose all 
anxiety about any personal outcome but must fear- 
lessly do the right as he saw it. He concluded, how- 
ever, that if he could keep the esteem and regard of 
such men as Professor Hart, he would be en- 
couraged and feel "that I have deserved it." This he 
said would be a sufiicient reward no matter what 
the outcome was. 

George H. Payne as a youthful newspaper reporter 
visited Mr. Roosevelt, expecting to spend fifteen 
fearful and unsettled moments. He remained two 
hours and testifies ; 

Instead of the aloofness and the reserve that I had 
expected, I was warmed and thrilled by the simplicity 
of the n^an who was apparently anxious to make himself 
understood to a younger and unknown man. 

A recruit in camp during the Cuban war once ac- 
costed him: "Say, are you the lieutenant-colonel? 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 155 

The colonel is looking for you." He did not correct 
or condemn the bungling soldier but unceremoni- 
ously said to him, "Come with me and see how I 
do it." And so he trained the raw soldier tactfully 
and at the same time won a friend. 

Dean Lewis, out of a long friendship, says that 
while Mr. Roosevelt was "uniformly courteous and 
unassuming, there was a dignity in his intercourse 
which prevented familiarity by any except lifelong 
friends." While on campaigns he was pleased by 
the shout "Teddy" ; yet no one ever thus addressed 
him personally. Though he called a great many 
intimate friends by their first names, yet only when 
they had known him all their lives and were prac- 
tically of the same age did they call him "Theodore." 
A newspaper man, conceited by his assignment to 
Oyster Bay, began to boast of his familiarity with 
Mr. Roosevelt, said Mr. Thompson to me. One day, 
during an interview with the boys, this "fresh" re- 
porter remarked, "Colonel, I suppose you will go to 
the polls to-morrow and vote the Democratic ticket." 
Immediately Mr. Roosevelt froze up ; his eye flashed, 
and he replied, "I am ready to answer any sensible 
questions but not a fool's queries." He would say no 
more, and for days would not again see the "boys" ; 
the "upstart" had to leave Oyster Bay. Loose in- 
timacy was never permitted. 

Regardless of any one he condemned the custom 
of using political pull to secure pardons for unques- 
tioned criminals. He speaks of men of high stand- 
ing as urging clemency, and said that they included 
two United States senators, a governor, two judges, 



15G ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

an editor, and "some eminent lawyers and business 
men." He further explained that in some of the 
cases such as "where some young toughs had com- 
mitted rape on a helpless immigrant girl," and an- 
other where a wealthy and prominent physician had 
betrayed a girl and then persuaded her to practice 
abortion, "I rather lost my temper." This righteous 
anger led him to write some of the petitioners for 
such pardons that he was sorry he could not instead 
add to the penal sentences. He then gave the facts 
out, "for," he adds, "I thought that my petitioners 
deserved public censure." Their anger at this pro- 
cedure "gave me real satisfaction." 

No one in the world could "lord it over him," as 
will be vividly illustrated by the following, related 
by the Hon. Charles E. Hughes. It occurred when 
Mr. Roosevelt and the Kaiser were attending the 
services connected with the funeral of King Ed- 
ward: 

After the ceremony, the Kaiser said to Colonel Roosevelt: 
"Call upon me at two o'clock; I have just forty-five minutes 
to give you." 

"I will be there at two, your Majesty, but unfortunately, 
your Majesty, I have but twenty minutes to give you." 

Dr. Lyman Abbott in his Reminiscences gives this 
testimony to Mr. Roosevelt's spirit of cooperation on 
The Outlook : 

During the five years of our association he proved him- 
self an ideal exemplar of the spirit and value of team work, 
that he was a cordial collaborator with his fellow editors, 
that he never sought to impose upon us the authority which 



1 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 157 

his reputation and his position had given him, that he was 
the friend of every one in the office.* 

Like the Great Teacher, he was, because of respect 
for others, always a natural and full member of any 
group he joined. He tried to tie up all of his "party" 
to his program and do cooperative work and was 
severely criticized for dealing and working with 
such men as Quay. But while Mr. Roosevelt often 
secured valuable assistance in this way, he never 
compromised his convictions or swerved from an 
upright standard in the least degree. If he had, 
they would have uncovered it in the Progressive 
campaign and the "Boss" Barnes trial and would 
have "broken" him. But he went out with an un- 
sullied escutcheon. 

Soon after Mr. Roosevelt's election Senator Quay 
called on him and said, "Most men who claim to be 
reformers are hypocrites, but I deem you sincere." 
That formed a basis for team work, and often after- 
ward Quay aided the President. Speaking to Sena- 
tor Beveridge afterward, he said: "I confess that 
I have a personal liking for Quay. He stands for 
nearly everything I am against, but he is straight- 
forward about it and never tries to fool me." When 
death approached he sent for Mr. Roosevelt and 
asked him to look after the Delaware Indians whose 
blood ran in his veins. At his demise the President 
sent Mrs. Quay a telegram: 

Accept my profound sympathy, official and personal. 
Throughout my term as President Senator Quay has been 

^Reminiscences, Lyman Abbott, p. 443. 



158 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

my stanch and loyal friend. I had hoped to the last that he 
would, by his sheer courage, pull through his illness. Again 
accept my sympathy. Theodore Roosevelt. 

Because of what the President considered a brutal 
attack on another senator he withdrew a dinner in- 
vitation to Senator Tillman and they became avowed 
enemies. Knowing this and desiring to defeat the 
bill forbidding railroad rebates, the Standpat Re- 
publicans so arranged matters that the advocacy of 
the bill would be in Tillman's hands. But enmity 
did not spoil "team work" and the bill was passed, 
the President remarking, ^*I was delighted to go 
with him or with anyone so long as he was traveling 
my way — and no longer." 

Like every friendly and courteous man, he loved 
animals. John Wesley insisted that there must be 
a place in heaven for his faithful horse. 

During a round-up on the plains a calf too weak 
to follow its mother was carried by Mr. Roosevelt 
in front of the saddle two or three times. When 
finally it was decided that it could not be taken 
along, he insisted that the mother-cow be left be- 
hind with it, rather than allow it to starve on the 
plains. 

President Roosevelt writes Ethel an interesting 
account of a "rescue." Sloan, the secret service man, 
and he were en route to church when he saw two 
dogs chasing a kitten. He drove the dogs off with his 
cane while Sloan captured the "kitty." Then the 
President inquired from the smiling spectators if 
the cat belonged to them, but not finding an owner, 
he went down the block with the kitten in his arms 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 159 

until he saw "a very nice colored woman with a 
little girl looking out the window of a small house" 
and gave her the kitten. Then, straightening his 
clothes and brushing his silk hat, he went on to 
church in a better frame to "worship.'' 

His gentleness was preserved and strengthened 
and his wisdom was magnified by his love for chil- 
dren. 

One day, after he had left the police job, two 
lads came to headquarters — not knowing that he had 
resigned — to see Commissioner Roosevelt, feeling 
sure that he would lift suspicion from and get justice 
for them when everyone else had failed them. His 
"spirit" still prevailed and the boys were not dis- 
appointed. Dr. Iglehart also tells of the little daugh- 
ter of the Rev. W. I. Bowman, who, on entering the 
train ahead of her mother, and knowing Mr. Roose- 
velt and seeing a vacant seat by his side fearlessly 
climbed into it. Though he had a manuscript in his 
hand, he laid it aside and began to talk to the little 
girl. When the mother, finally catching up with 
her little girl, reproved her for taking the liberty of 
thus seating herself, Mr. Roosevelt restrained her 
and said he was gratified to see that she knew him 
and sought his company. Mr. Roosevelt then arose 
and gave his seat to Mrs. Bowman and the little girl 
and went to sit with a colored man. 

While calling on Queen Alexandra subsequent to 
the funeral of King Edward, he heard "little squeals 
in the hall." When he left the Queen, he found 
Prince Olaf waiting outside the door and recog- 
nized the "squeals." The "royal" boy would not go 



160 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

to dinner but waited to have a "romp" with Mr. 
Roosevelt, who said, "I tossed him in the air and 
rolled him on the floor while he shouted with de- 
light." The noise of the "romp" had attracted the 
Queen, who came out and looked on with distinct 
pleasure in her face. 

Thomas A. Robbins, a prominent business man, re- 
counts the visit of Mr. Roosevelt to his house for a 
formal breakfast with prominent men. While he 
was taking off his own overcoat Mr. Roosevelt rushed 
up three flights of stairs with the "boy" and was 
soon stretched out on the floor with the lad before 
a miniature electric train and was saying, "That's 
right. Tommy, safety first." He had forgotten all 
about the waiting dignitaries downstairs. 

Edward Bok, in his Autobiography, describes an 
experience when his "lad," who had nearly died with 
typhoid fever, was told that he could have for his 
Christmas present anything he requested. When 
told to think about it, he replied: "But I know 
already. I want to be taken down to Washington 
to see the President." The trip was finally arranged, 
and Mr. Roosevelt turned away from various groups 
of importunate callers during business hours to talk 
and visit in a familiar way with the lad. The nation 
can always trust a man whom youth seeks out in 
this way. 

He was constantly forging through a crowd to 
give attention to a crippled or a sick child. An in- 
curably sick little girl was carried on a stretcher to 
the curb in a Portland, Oregon, street so that she 
could see the President. He noticed her, stopped his 



A COURTEOUS CHRISTIAN FRIEND 161 

carriage, ran over and kissed her and then the pro- 
cession moved again. 

During the summer of 1905 amidst heavy duties 
he stopped for a day and visited a children's hospital 
dedicated to the cure of tubercular bone disease. 
He then broke a very rigid rule and issued an appeal 
for financial aid for the institution. The same sum- 
mer he accepted the vice-presidency of the Public 
Schools Athletic League and wrote the president, 
General G. W. Wingate, that the systematic athletic 
drill given the boys was "a service of utmost impor- 
tance not merely from the standpoint of the physical 
but also from the standpoint of the ethical." 

It was as natural for him to glow with friendliness 
as for the stars to shine, and he was as true. He cul- 
tivated his human nature to be sensitive to the needs 
of humanity as the artist does his aesthetic nature to 
be sensitive to beauty. He responded to appeals- 
expressed or unexpressed— as readily and as satisfy- 
ingly as the mountain-fed springs do to the thirst 
of the traveler. He poured out helpful fellowship 
in the full confidence that God was humanity's 
Father and he felt that therefore no kindness fell on 
unproductive soil. He was a friend to man because 
man was a member of his Father's family. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 

"The rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable 
prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for 
which we strive." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

They helped every one his neighbor; and every one said 
to his brother, Be of good courage. — Isa. 41. 6. 

MRS. CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON, 
the sister of Mr. Roosevelt, in a brief ad- 
dress at the exercises when the corner stone 
was laid for the restoration of the old family home 
in New York, said : 

As Washington was known as the father of his people, 
and as Lincoln was known as the saviour of his people, 
so my brother will be known as the brother of his people. 

That was an apt and inspired title to give Mr. Roose- 
velt, and it completely fills the Christian ideal. 
Washington proclaimed the doctrine of man's equal 
brotherhood by establishing the republic, Lincoln set- 
tled its sincerity by freeing the slaves, and Roosevelt 
applied it practically by banishing the practice of 
giving special privileges to favored folk. 

Henry W. Stoddard, editor of The Evening Mail, 
New York, said to me : 

The biggest thing Mr. Roosevelt did for his nation was 
to establish the equality of all before the law. He asserted 

162 



THE BKOTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 163 

and confirmed the right to regulate capital and to allow 
neither rich nor poor, high nor low, as such, any special 
and peculiar privileges. Wealth felt itself to be supreme 
and had secured special consideration and was exerting 
abnormal power. The ability of the government to rectify 
this condition had been established by John Marshall, but 
the truth was sleeping and the masses seemed helpless. 
Mr. Roosevelt began the fight early and won the signal 
victory, that settled the matter, in the Northern Securities 
case. He set the nation free for further development by 
thus fixing in a practical way the native equality of all 
citizens of America. 

The next greatest thing he did was to awaken the sense 
of responsibility and the ideal of man's brotherhood in all 
the world by steady and sane appeals that finally put the 
spirit of war into the nation. A large part of the people 
lacked it because rocked to sleep in a selfish security which 
admitted no responsibility for the world's condition. 

He did not believe that God was a respecter of 
persons. He refused to be counted as different from 
his fellows; he was in all matters very much like 
other people. He always minimized his native gifts. 
In refusing to aid Mr. Richard Watson Gilder gather 
material about his boyhood he admitted that he 
always shrank from having a sketch of his ^'younger 
days" prepared. 'Terhaps my reason is that . . . 
they were absolutely commonplace. ... It was not 
until I was sixteen that I began to show any prowess 
or even ordinary capacity." To Julian Street he 
disclaimed being a genius either as a writer or an 
orator, and added, "If I have anything at all resem- 
bling genius, it is a gift of leadership." Then he 
added, with a serious air: "To tell the truth, I 
like to believe that, by what I have accomplished 



164 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

without great gifts, I may be a source of encourage- 
ment to American boys." 

Mr. McGrath, once his trusted secretary, told me : 

He had such great intellectual gifts that he caught things 
so quickly and could hold them so reliably that it took less 
time to become informed than it did most men. He had 
time, therefore, for his family and humanizing pursuits 
which other men doing the same amount of work would 
not have had, and he was wise enough to follow them. 
Nothing could deprive him of the exercise he needed, so 
that his nerves might be under control. He knew that his 
physical condition would affect both his mind and temper. 

He constantly spent himself to have the best pos- 
sible mental equipment so that he could meet his 
responsibilities. President Nicholas Murray Butler, 
of Columbia University, told me that one day, two 
years after Mr. Roosevelt had succeeded to the Presi- 
dency and during a visit he remarked, incidentally, 
''Theodore, if you are not careful, you will dry up 
mentally. Most office-holders allow details to occupy 
their attention and cease reading." A few days after 
that President Butler received a note from Mr. 
Roosevelt in which he said, "I reviewed my reading 
after you spoke to me about it and on the way to 
Oyster Bay, I made a list of the books I could re- 
member having read during the past two years." 
The list, which he made from memory, contained 
nearly three hundred titles and authors. Among 
them were Herodotus, ^schylus, Euripides, six vol- 
umes of Mahaffy's Studies of the Greek World, Ma- 
han's Types of Naval Officers, Nicolay's Lincoln and 
two volumes of Lincoln's speeches and writings, Ba- 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 165 

con's EssaySy five of Shakespeare's plays, Paradise 
Losty two of Maspero's volumes on Early Assyrian, 
Chaldean, and Egyptian civilizations, Dante's In- 
ferno, Lounsbury's Shakespeare and VoltaAre, Tom 
Sawyer, Wagner's Simple Life, various books on the 
Boer War, Pike's Through the Sun-Arctic Forest, 
London's Gall, of the Wild, Fox's The Little Shep- 
herd of Kingdom Gome, Wister's The Virginian, and 
so on. The list when perused seems almost unbe- 
lievable. His mental alertness and furnishing were 
not an accident. 

J. H. Spurgeon, editor of the Philadelphia Ledger, 
told me that when he returned from Europe with 
Mr. Roosevelt on one occasion there were for 
some reason four captains from the German navy 
on board. They gave a dinner to Mr. Roosevelt and 
"invited two or three of us who happened to be on 
board. I noticed that Mr. Roosevelt conversed with 
these captains about their navy and told them in 
detail many facts which even they themselves did not 
know about their own navy. He was thoroughly 
posted concerning it." 

He early felt his responsibility to his fellows and 
so employed his gifts where they would best de- 
velop. 

In his first message to Congress he said : 

When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood re- 
mains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the 
kind of national life for which we strive. Each man must 
work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help 
can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is 
indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man who 



166 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself 
or anyone else, yet that each at times stumbles or halts, 
that each at times needs to have the helping hand out- 
stretched to him. 

Once in speaking of his belief in God, he said, "And 
by God I mean the brotherhood of man." 

Speaking to college students, he i'ecognized the 
added ability an education gave them and remarked : 
"From those to whom much has been given we have 
biblical authority to expect and demand much, and 
the most that can be given to any man is an educa- 
tion." 

"Perhaps not a little of our affection for him arose 
from the fact that he was very human, which is only 
another way of saying that he had faults," said his 
trusted friend, Dean Lewis. 

Jacob A. Riis adds : 

And has he, then, no faults, this hero of mine? Yes, he 
has, and I am glad of it, for I want a live man for a friend 
and not a dead saint. They are the only ones, I notice, who 
have no faults. 

A trusted friend of Mr. Roosevelt said to me that 
Mr. Roosevelt once told him that the greatest battle 
in his life had been with his temper, and that he had 
never been able to control it completely until he en- 
tered the White House. 

He seldom displayed his feelings, but there is 
abundant evidence that he often felt the lack of ap- 
preciation shown by his fellows. He wrote a friend : 

In the [Barnes] libel suit, that has just ended, the thing 
that to me was most painfully evident was that at least 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 167 

nine tenths of the men of light and leading and a very- 
marked majority of the people as a whole desired my 
defeat. 

In the same letter he naively tells a story of Confed- 
erate days which suggests that he sometimes grew 
dispirited in the conflicts. Dr. Polk, then of New 
York, was inspector-general in the Confederacy and 
was sent to the rear just before Appomattox to hurry 
up the stragglers. He spoke to one lank, half -starved 
soldier as he plowed through the mud : ''Hurry up, 
my man, hurry up." Whereupon the North Caro- 
linian looked gloomily at him, shook his head, and 
remarked as he walked by, "If I ever love another 
country, damn me." 

Naturally, this real human being craved for com- 
mendation and approval. Lawrence Abbott, out of 
an intimate knowledge, writes: 

No man that I have known liked personal approval more 
than Roosevelt. He had a kind of childlike responsiveness 
to commendation and praise. He did not wear his heart 
on his sleeve, but I think he was really hurt when those 
to whom he was attached were displeased with him. 

After receiving a letter of commendation from 
the late D. D. Thompson, then editor of the North- 
western Christian Advocate, he wrote him : 

No man who is President ought to wish any further re- 
ward; but if I wished for one, I could imagine none greater 
than to receive your letter and feel the spirit that lies be- 
hind it. Now, my dear sir, you have throughout my term 
as President given me heart and strength in more ways 
than one, and I thank you most deeply. 



168 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He was greatly encouraged when the so-called 
"common" people were found backing him. He 
wanted to be at home with them as was the "Car- 
penter of Nazareth." In a letter to Trevelyan he 
recounts the visit of three "back-country farmers," 
who after much effort had succeeded in getting to 
him and explained that they "hadn't anything what- 
ever to ask." They came merely to express their 
belief "in me" and "as one rugged old fellow put it, 
'We want to shake that honest hand.' Now, this 
anecdote seems rather sentimental as I tell it. . . . 
They have made me feel that I am under a big debt 
of obligation to the good people of this country." He 
coveted the confidence of the people. 

Jacob A. Riis reports Mr. Roosevelt as feeling that 
coming into the Presidency from the Vice-Presidency 
he did not really have back of him the votes of the 
people. "He would like to sit in the White House 
elected by the people." He merely wanted it as a 
vote of confidence. He himself said previous to the 
election of 1904: "I do not believe in playing the 
hypocrite. Any strong man fit to be President 
would desire a renomination and reelection after his 
first term," just as McKinley, or Cleveland, or Wash- 
ington did. While "it is pleasant to think that one's 
countrymen think well of him," yet he only wants 
the office if "decent citizens will believe I have 
shown wisdom, integrity, and courage." 

He seldom gave way to the "blues," but he never- 
theless had to battle them. Mr. Loeb told me, "He 
had times of depression usually caused by the fact 
that things did not come along as fast as he had a 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE IGD 

right to expect." His faith in God restored his hope- 
fulness. 

Mr. Stoddard said, ''He greatly needed to have 
men show that they had confidence in him." Mr. 
Roosevelt wrote ''Bill" Sewall, "Sometimes I feel a 
little melancholy because it is so hard to persuade 
people to accept equal justice." 

He was able to overcome lowness of spirit by keep- 
ing himself in such excellent physical trim that he 
secured the benefits of the exalting thrills which 
come from enjoyable, vigorous exercise. And he 
fully appreciated all the details of his vacation 
periods and their possible fellowship with friends. 
Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard spent seven weeks with Mr. 
and Mrs. Roosevelt at Trinidad, West Indies. Mrs. 
Stoddard, who was up at sunrise the first morning 
to enjoy the flowers at their best, found Mr. Roose- 
velt already reveling in the color, artistry, and 
fragrance of the wonderful gardens, before the dis- 
tracting noises began. He was very careful to do 
the things that kept him distinctly human. 

He was genuinely grieved by the charge that he 
was "war mad," and greedy to fight, and told Julian 
Street ; 

Every man has a soft and easy side to him. I speak now 
out of the abundance of my own heart. I'm a domestic 
man. I have always wanted to be with Mrs. Roosevelt 
and my children and now with my grandchildren. I'm 
not a brawler. I detest war. But if war came, I'd have to 
go, and my four boys would go too, because we have ideals 
in this family.^ 

iTaken from Julian Street's The Most Interesting American, by permission 
of the Publishers, The Century Co. 



170 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Most folk with his make-up would refuse to appear 
in motion pictures, since he loathed the bizarre and 
avoided mere display. But he saw an opportunity 
to extend his influence in a proposition to make a 
film reproducing his life. At the same time, how- 
ever, his heart went out to the ''soldier boys" and he 
stipulated secretly that all the profits should go to 
the "Red Cross" or other war organizations during 
the war. When the armistice was signed he felt that 
the "boys" would need entertainment more than 
ever, and then directed that the profits should con- 
tinue to be so used "until all of the men are returned 
to their homes from the war." 

He was never stilted nor was he starched with 
artificiality. Though somewhat surprised, he yet 
entered into the spirit of a meeting held on his ship 
while visiting Porto Rico by a club made up mostly 
of enlisted men in honor of our "comrade and ship- 
mate, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United 
States." The gathering reminded him of his lodge 
at Oyster Bay where the "shipwrights, railroad men, 
and fishermen" he met were of the same type. He 
mingled with folks in a normal way — he was a real 
human being who could be a brother. 

He recounts the visit of one of his prize-fight 
friends who "explained that he wanted to see me 
alone," and then sitting down, offered him an ex- 
pensive cigar. When informed that he did not 
smoke, he said, " Tut it in your pocket.^ This I 
accordingly did." Here is the real spirit of 
camaradrie. 

He had no patience with the truckler, and so he 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 171 

said, ^'It is just as much a confession of inferiority 
to feel mean hatred and defiance of a man as it is to 
feel a mean desire to please him overmuch." It is 
a confession in either case "that the man is not as 
good as the man whom he hates and envies or before 
whom he truckles." 

Like Lincoln, he saved himself from heavy strain 
by a real enjoyment of fun. It must, however, al- 
ways be clean. One day while visiting him, Lawrence 
Abbott was surprised to see the President leap out 
of his chair and grasp Senator Tom Carter by the 
hands and go dancing back and forth over the floor 
chanting : 

"Oh, the Irish and the Dutch — 
They don't amount to much, 
But huroo for the Scandinoo-vian." 

Mr. Roosevelt afterward explained that Senator 
Carter was a "standpatter" who considered him 
(Mr. Roosevelt) a "visionary crank," and therefore 
they differed in politics. Mr. Roosevelt continued: 

Now, Senator Carter is Irish and I am Dutch, and we 
thought it was a very good joke on us. So every time we 
have met since, unless there are too many people about, 
we are apt to greet each other as we did just now. 

He laughed much as he recounted the interpretive 
nicknames given by his Rough Riders to each other. 
He tells us that a fastidious private, an Easterner, 
was called "Tough Ike," while his bunkie, a rough 
cowpuncher, was called "The Dude." A huge red- 
headed Irishman was called "Sheeny Solomon," while 
one of the best fighters, a young Jew, was called 



172 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"Pork Chops." A very quiet fellow was called "Hell- 
Roarer," while a profane scamp was titled "Prayer- 
ful James." 

He was so human that he could interpret all kinds 
of folks. Senator Hoar once called on the Presi- 
dent and in horrified accents asked if he knew any- 
thing about "this man Daniels whom you have ap- 
pointed to be marshal of Arizona?" Mr. Roosevelt 
answered: "Yes, I think so. He was a member of 
my regiment." "Do you know," asked Mr. Hoar, im- 
pressively, "that he has killed two men?" The Presi- 
dent, with a startled look, said, "Is that so? I must 
call him on the carpet immediately, for he only 
told me about killing one." The Senator left, know- 
ing that he had lost his case. He frequently "joked" 
people out of court. 

In his Pacific Theological Lectures, he affirms: 
"My plea is for the virtue that shall be strong and 
that shall have a good time. You recollect that Wes- 
ley said he wasn't going to leave all the good time 
to the devil." 

His happy spirit kept him so human and young 
that he was always the "Big Brother" of the boys, 
and the service which Mr. Bok proposed toward the 
end of Mr. Roosevelt's life would have been ideal. 
In his Autobiography Mr. Bok relates how he in- 
formed Mr. Roosevelt that he wanted to invest 
twenty-five thousand dollars a year in boyhood "who 
will be the manhood of to-morrow," by paying him 
that salary as head of the Boy Scouts. Immediately 
the plan appealed to Mr. Roosevelt, who at first sug- 
gested that "there are men in it that don't approve 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 173 

of me at all." Warming to the plan to build the 
four hundred thousand Scouts to a million, he asked, 
"You mean for me to be the active head?" and was 
reminded that he could be nothing else. After a while 
he replied: 

I'd love doing it; by Jove! it would be wonderful to rally 
a million boys for real Americanism as you say. It looms 
up as I think it over. Suppose we let it simmer for a 
month or two. 

But when the "month or two" had elapsed, Mr. 
Roosevelt had crossed to the other shore, and Mr. 
Bok's splendid plan became impossible. 

He was aroused as in no other way by anyone's 
questioning his integrity. When vigorous opponents 
questioned his actual fighting in Cuba, he imme- 
diately collected evidence from ofiQcers and privates 
and gave their irrefutable testimony wide circu- 
lation. 

I sat near him in Madison Square Garden when 
he spoke in favor of the candidacy of John Purroy 
Mitchel for mayor of New York. While urging 
hearty support of the war a rough voice interrupted, 
"Why aren't you over there?" The audience would 
have handled the interrupter roughly, but Mr. Roose- 
velt quieted them with, "Let me handle him." In- 
dignation was white hot. He had written Theodore 
Jr., "It is very bitter to me that all of you, the 
young, should be facing death while I sit in ease 
and safety." All knew how eager he was to go 
abroad and fight. But he controlled himself and 
said with the bite he alone could put into it : 



174 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Listen, you creature. They would not let me go, but I 
sent my four sons, every one of whose lives is a thousand 
times dearer to me than my own. And then you dare to 
ask me, an American father, such a question? 

He could use satire when necessary, as when some- 
one had made an exasperatingly false charge and he 
was asked: 

Will you reply? "To that miserable creature?" he asked. 
"I doubt if it's worth while. He reminds me of a cock- 
roach, creeping over the marble floor. It is just a question 
whether it is better to crush the cockroach or to refrain 
from staining the marble." 

But, like "Another," he could take abuse in si- 
lence when it was aimed at him as a leader of the 
people. During the Progressive campaign, Mr. 
Roosevelt was called a Benedict Arnold, a Judas 
Iscariot, and every other creature that wild lan- 
guage could describe, but he went straight on feeling 
their stabs but enduring them like a good soldier. 
When McKinley was assassinated, many charged the 
deed to the abuse of the press couched in cartoon 
and editorial. When Schrank, who shot Mr. Roose- 
velt, was arrested, he asserted that he was impelled 
by the abusive charges in the newspapers. Mr. 
Roosevelt told intimate friends that he expected this 
abuse to bring a physical attack upon him. 

He detested the scandalmonger and character as- 
sassin. In his Pacific Theological Lectures he 
straightly charges that the man "who poisons their 
minds is as reprehensible a scoundrel ... as the 
man who poisons their bodies." Again he says: 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 175 

I abhor a thief and I abhor a liar as much as I abhor 
a thief. I abhor the assassin who tries to kill a man; I 
abhor almost equally the assassin of that man's character. 
The infamy of the creature who tries to assassinate an 
upright and honest public servant doing his duty is no 
greater than the infamy of the creature who tries to as- 
sassinate an honest man's character. 

He insisted that not only is the man wronged, but the 
public is wronged by being made to think that all 
public officials are crooked so that even a crook will 
be put in office by the saying, ^'Oh, well, I guess he's 
no worse than the rest ; they are all pretty bad." 

If you once get the public in such a frame of mind, you 
have done more than can be done in any other way toward 
ruining our citizenship, toward ruining popular govern- 
mental honesty and efficiency {Realizable Ideals, p. 142). 

Mr. Roosevelt was never unreasonably hard on a 
sincerely repentant man or one who was on the 
wrong side because of ignorance, or limited privi- 
leges. But if a man who had mental and moral 
privileges was crooked, Mr. Roosevelt would not 
spare him. 

He held no grievances to be repaid later. Mr. 
Stoddard said, "If he had a difference with another 
person and a conclusion was reached after a 'talk,' 
the matter was closed with him if it was with you." 

Charles E. Jefferson quotes Burne-Jones as saying, 
"Make the most of our best for others — that is the 
universal religion." This might easily have been the 
motto of Mr. Roosevelt. General Leonard Wood 
said, when the cornerstone was laid for the restora- 



176 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

tion of the Roosevelt homestead, which is to be used 
for Americanization in lower New York: 

The motto of Mr. Roosevelt was "I serve." It interprets 
his whole career. It speaks from all his deeds. If we can 
impress it on the hearts of childhood together with his 
ideals, then our nation will last forever. 

The Rev. Henry L. Everett, a Jersey City clergy- 
man, tells of a visit President Roosevelt made to 
Williams College. Mr. Everett was chairman of a 
student reception committee, which gave him the op- 
portunity for a personal chat. Mr. Roosevelt asked 
him where he expected to invest his life. "I an- 
swered, ^I will become either a lawyer or a minis- 
ter.' '' Promptly the President replied : "Fine ! you 
can make either of them a ministry. You young 
men won't believe it, but real success in any line 
must be service." The Master said, "I am among 
you as he that serveth." 

Mrs. Robinson said to me : 

While my father saw that Theodore received an 
intellectual training, that was secondary. His main 
emphasis was along social and religious lines. My father 
himself endeavored to use any unusual knowledge or 
privileged position or fine culture for the benefit of those 
in a less privileged position. He never gave immediate 
material aid to an applicant; but, taking the address, he 
would send some member of the family to investigate the 
real need. He taught Theodore that while he might leave 
him enough wealth to be independent of remunerative toil, 
he must labor just the same in some line of service for 
his fellows. 

Again she told me, "I never asked my brother to 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 177 

do a single thing for me that he refused to do. It 
mattered not how busy or how difficult my request, 
he did it joyfully and never with complaint." 

He was greatly disgusted with the mere money- 
getter. He was an aristocrat by birth, but he used 
the culture and confidence this gave him to 
strengthen him for service. Referring to the charge 
that he wanted to be ''king of America" after his 
long tour in Europe, he replied that his accusers 
either did not know him or did not understand the 
position of a king, who was a "cross between a Vice- 
President and the leader of the 400." To further em- 
phasize his repugnance he remarked: "I felt if I 
met another king I should bite him." He referred to 
one particularly fussy monarch he met as "nothing 
but a twittering wagtail." 

He enjoyed and learned from actual fellowship 
with all kinds of people in all walks of life. The 
French ambassador, Jusserand, often went swim- 
ming with him in Rock Creek. He wrote Miss 
Carow about a unique picnic arranged by her 
sister, Mrs. Roosevelt: "Spec [Von Sternberg, the 
German ambassador, whom he greatly loved] rode 
with Edith [Mrs. Roosevelt] and me looking more 
like Hans Christian Andersen's little tin soldier 
than ever." He had come out in his Hussar uniform 
to present his credentials as ambassador. After the 
ceremony was over, Mr. Roosevelt said, "I told him 
to put on civilized raiment, which he did." Then he 
remained a» couple of days and we "chopped and 
shot and rode together." 

While discussing hunting one day in Europe he 



178 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

told King Haakon of Norway about acting as a 
"deputy" under "Sheriff" Seth Bullock when they 
gathered around the body of a dead desperado as 
English bird hunters might and say, "My bird, I be- 
lieve." Then Mr. Roosevelt suddenly decided to see 
this "royal life" through the eyes of a comradely 
plainsman, and he cabled Seth Bullock, of the Da- 
kotas, to meet him in London. Kermit tells us that 
the first remark "Seth" made on arriving was that 
"he was so glad to see father that he felt like hang- 
ing his hat on the dome of Saint Paul's and shooting 
it off." 

He was at home with all types and interrogated 
them for information and utilized it for service to 
his fellows. One day, going through the White 
House, he found a group of painters at work and 
asked them, "How much do you get a day?" They 
replied, "Three dollars and twenty-five cents." Then 
he said, "That is mighty good pay for such pleasant 
work." He then took a brush, covered a good sized 
space with paint and told them he once thought he 
would like to be a painter because "you can see some- 
thing accomplished with each stroke of the brush." 

Mr. Thompson told me that he had seen him again 
and again on long trips go out of his way to shake 
hands with some humble laborer. "It was not stage 
play but it was as natural as his attention to chil- 
dren, whom he dearly loved." He felt akin to every- 
body, as does the true son of God. 

When he visited the Panama Canal while it was 
under construction, he went everywhere among the 
men, splashing through mud and ignoring dangers 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 179 

and asking questions and refusing to be feted and 
entertained. He became one of the men in very- 
spirit. One day a group of machinists cried out, 
"Teddy's all right," and he instantly replied : 

You are all right, and I wish there were enough of me 
to say it with all the force I feel. Every man who does his 
part well in this work leaves a record worthy of being 
made by an American citizen. You are a straight-out lot 
of Americans and I am proud of you.* 

He lifted their work into the realm of patriotism 
and made it rightfully appear as necessary as his 
own. It will be remembered that afterward he had 
a bronze medal made for every worker on the canal 
which was presented in a dignified way. 

Lyman Abbott told me that Mr. Roosevelt rarely 
missed the weekly conference-luncheon while on The 
Outlook. He would enter into the discussions 
heartily and in a commonplace way call out the 
opinions of the youngest men present : 

He would listen too if they said anything worth while. 
If the conference drifted into mere talk, he would not be 
impatient or say a word, but would quietly take something 
out of his pocket and begin reading. 

He would not easily acquiesce even in a discussion 
with a dear friend. But he was patient in hearing 
and answering the argument of anyone. He would 
never ride them down ruthlessly with "superior" 
wisdom and a dogmatic conclusion. Dr. Lambert, 

'Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Theodore Roose- 
velt: The Boy and the Man, by Jamea Morgan. Copyright, 1907, by The 
Macmillan Company. 



180 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

usually his hunting companion and always his inti- 
mate friend, talked with me freely along this line: 

Theodore never let go of himself. He did nothing care- 
lessly. He was one of the surest shots in America because 
he always used good judgment and self-control. He could 
pick off a bear amidst a pack of dogs when only the rarest 
skill could do it. He often excelled because he acted 
quickly. But he was never boastful, nor did he exultingly 
talk about himself. 

We once had a long and animated controversy over 
whether he had hit a bear in the right or left side. I 
showed him where the bullet had come out on the right 
side. He was certain that he had hit the bear on that 
side. Dr. Rixey and all the rest agreed. Theodore turned 
to me and said, "Do you mean to tell me that what I saw 
was not so?" The discussion was getting heated and so I 
dropped it. The next day Theodore opened it up again. 
He had the evidence of the bullet which opposed the evi- 
dence of his sight. That showed that evidence could not 
always be trusted, and he was perplexed. Finally I said, 
"You know a bear is very lively, and he was dodging from 
right to left, striking at the dogs. You aimed at the right 
side but just as you shot the bear jumped and your bullet 
hit him in the left." He finally acquiesced. He would stick 
for his view of a matter but had so trained himself that he 
was not irritable about it. 

He applied justice in every case without respect 
to the standing or race of the individual or group 
under consideration. Almost prophetically, he had 
a contest with the National Republican Committee 
when in his early twenties he was a delegate at 
Chicago. The National Committee had nominated 
ex-Senator Powell Clayton for permanent chairman, 
while Mr. Roosevelt led a group of sympathizing 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 181 

''boss-busters" determined to elect ex-Congressman 
Lynch, a Negro. He asserted in an address that 
only two delegates to the convention had "seats" 
on the National Committee and that it was a reflec- 
tion on their (the delegates to the convention) 
''capacity for government" to allow this committee, 
in those circumstances, to name a presiding officer 
for the convention. 

He would not be content to salve over a sore; he 
would undertake to cure it. Lillian Wald, of the 
Henry Street Settlement, tells how Mr. Roosevelt 
at one time endeavored to stop a soup-kitchen in her 
neighborhood, since it was more or less of "an in- 
sulting answer to a distress that was based on the 
fundamental question of poor pay for hard jobs." 
She said that Mr. Roosevelt always went to the heart 
of the matter and investigated the actual conditions 
in the "sweat-trade" through his visits into the 
homes of the "sweaters." 

Corporations, on the one hand, continued to claim 
peculiar privileges, while on the other, "labor" often 
grew arrogant. Mr. Roosevelt endeavored to be 
a real brother to each and to put them on a brotherly 
basis. 

To the grasping and "divine-right" capitalist, he 
would quote Lincoln: 

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital 
is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed but 
for labor. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves 
much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights. 
. . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of 
property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is de- 
sirable; it is a positive good in the world, Let not him who 



182 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him 
work diligently and build one for himself, thus, by ex- 
ample, showing that his own shall be safe from violence 
when built. 

Mr. Roosevelt made his impartiality very clear in 
a message to Congress: *'We are neither for the 
rich man as such nor for the poor man as such. We 
are for the upright man, rich or poor." 

But he also recognized the fact that legislation 
frequently favors one class as against another, and 
so he proposed : "According to our ability we intend 
to safeguard the rights of the mighty, but we intend 
no less jealously to safeguard the rights of the 
lowly." When a financial flurry and possible panic 
was threatened by the "money interests" if he in- 
sisted on certain enactments, he announced that he 
had always put down mobs without question as to 
their origin, as he "could no more tolerate wrong 
committed in the name of property than wrong com- 
mitted against property." He was criticized be- 
cause he gave names as he "coupled condemnation 
of labor leaders and condemnation of certain big 
capitalists, describing them all alike as undesirable 
citizens." After severely arraigning the "divine- 
right" owners of the anthracite coal mines he was 
as unsparing in arraigning the labor-union forces 
for insisting on putting a man out of the govern- 
ment printing office because he was not a union man. 
He openly condemned a certain industry which by 
new machinery and combinations of factories greatly 
increased its production and profits without giving 
the employees any of the benefits. He said : "This 



THE BROTHER OF HIS PEOPLE 183 

represented an increasing efficiency with a positive 
decrease of social and industrial justice." 

In the face of labor's helplessness, when confronted 
by gigantic production organizations, he said : 

While we must repress all illegalities and discourage all 
immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of corpora- 
tions, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organiza- 
tion of labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, 
is beneficent, and is one of the greatest possible agencies 
in the attainment of a true industrial, as well as a true 
political, democracy in the United States. 

He urged, while President, that the two groups 
should confer as "partners": 

It is essential that capitalist and wage-worker should 
consult freely one with the other, should each strive to 
bring closer the day when both shall realize that they are 
properly partners and not enemies. 

Here is a nucleus for the plan, afterward so largely 
adopted, of providing for governing "councils" or 
"boards" made up of owners and laborers in fac- 
tories, mills and mines. 

He believed and practiced the doctrine which Paul 
preached at Athens, that God "made of one blood 
all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the 
earth" (Acts 17. 26). 



CHAPTER IX 
PUBLIC DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 

"Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife . . . reso- 
lute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet 
to use practical methods." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

Who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me. 
—Isa. 6. 8. 

THERE was no sly stepping, nor subtle 
speech, nor smooth subterfuges in Mr. 
Roosevelt's life plans. He walked and 
worked in the open. He cared nothing for personal 
cost when righteousness was under consideration. 

When first a candidate for the Legislature he 
visited a saloon with the "ward leader." When 
asked by the saloonist to support a lower license, he 
made inquiries concerning the prevalent rate, and 
being convinced that it was too low, he promptly de- 
clared that he would work for a higher one. After 
being elected he introduced such a bill, and the Re- 
publicans were panic-stricken, as it was as "ad- 
vanced" as prohibition legislation would have been 
on the East Side in 1900. 

He was just as frank in other directions, and as 
late as 1915 opposed a New York State bill making 
Bible-reading in the schools compulsory. He called 
it a fanatical move. While a member of the Legisla- 
ture, he risked the vigorous opposition of the Catho- 




Copyright, Underwood & Underwood Studios, New York 

MR. ROOSEVELT'S FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH 

(and the choice of his closest friends) 



DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 185 

lies by blocking a long-permitted grant to a "Catho- 
lic Protectory." 

When refusing to announce himself as a candidate 
for President in 1912, he said that his decision was 
not final, for, "If the people should feel that I was 
the instrument to be used at this time, I should ac- 
cept even although I knew that I should be broken 
and cast aside in the using." 

Senator Piatt tried to frighten him away from 
his "franchise bill" by classing him with the then 
much-condemned and greatly ridiculed Populists of 
Kansas and warned him that he could never be 
elected again since the corporations would not con- 
tribute to his campaign and without their aid it 
was thought that a successful campaign could not be 
conducted. He cared not for the threatened penalty 
but drove the bill through the Legislature and 
caused the first break— which never closed— with the 
stand-patters. 

He wanted no special consideration even when 
misfortune struck him. For example, when he was 
shot. Governor Wilson magnanimously offered to 
cease campaigning, but he promptly replied : 

Whatever could with truth and propriety have been said 
against me and my cause before I was shot can with equal 
truth and equal propriety be said against me now, and it 
should so be said; and the things that cannot be said now 
are merely the things that ought not to have been said be- 
fore. This is not a contest about any man— it is a contest 
concerning principles. 

When his death was announced, Mr. John Wood- 
bury, the secretary of the class, sent to the class of 



186 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

1880 as applying to Mr. Roosevelt, a section from 
Bunyan, as follows : 

Then he said, "I am going to my Father's, and though 
with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not re- 
pent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where 
I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in 
my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that 
can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to he a 
witness for me that I have fought His battles who now ivill 
he my rewarder." 

He, like Paul, had his sears ; and he was sore weary, 
as was Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, concerning whom the 
above was written. 

He never made a test for others he was not willing 
to endure himself. When he discovered that army 
officers were loafing physically and so were incapable 
of prompt out-door leadership if needed, he issued 
an order requiring every active officer to ride horse- 
back one hundred miles in three days. When vigor- 
ous protests were made to arouse sympathy for some 
corpulent generals, the President himself, in com- 
pany with Surgeon-General Rixey, rode one hun- 
dred miles in one day over the Virginia roads, which 
were frozen in ruts and while a snowstorm held 
sway for half the day. In the same way he was 
submerged for about seventy minutes in one of the 
first of the modern submarines, during which time 
he calmly made a thorough examination of the vessel. 
Concerning this trip, he said : ^'I went down in it 
chiefly because I did not like to have the officers and 
enlisted men think I wanted them to try things I was 
reluctant to try myself'^ 



DUTIES FEAKLESSLY PERFOKMED 187 

While police commissioner he frequently spent the 
whole night— often going forty hours without sleep 
—in patroling the city so that he might actually 
enter into the life of the policeman. He always 
wanted to be sure that his orders were "fair" and 
never arbitrary. 

He never reckoned "success" as a necessary proof 
that he was right. When duty's door opened, he en- 
tered and walked forward, one step at a time. After 
the "Progressive" defeat, which many believed would 
"break" him, he wrote in his AutoUography — a work 
which was received by the public with scant en- 
thusiasm and interest— explaining that his ideal 
was formed on "service" to be rendered without any 
notion of appreciation or applause. He affirmed that 
the real public servant "will do the thing that is next 
when the time and the need come together" and not 
ask what the future will bring him. He will not, 
Mr. Roosevelt insisted, be disturbed if another gets 
the credit for doing what he started or made pos- 
sible, but will be happy in the consciousness that by 
doing well he has prepared the way for the other 
man who can do better." 

Dr. Lambert said of him : 

He would risk following a decision even though it 
promised total annihilation if it failed. He was willing to 
take such a responsibility because he believed in the final 
support of the people. Nothing, however, could affright 
him when a decision had been reached. He would say, 
"I have gone into it and I dare not back down now." 

He therefore never condemned himself when an 
honest effort was apparently futile. And so he 



188 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

wrote Senator Hanna, after his "Anthracite Strike" 
appeal failed, that he was "down-hearted over the 
result. But I am glad I tried anyhow. I should have 
hated to feel that I had failed to make any effort." 

His confidence rested on the certainty of justice 
triumphing in the end, for he told Mr. Riis : 

It is a matter of conviction with me that no frank and 

honest man could be in the long run entangled by the 

snares of plotters, whatever appearances might for the 
moment indicate. 

This claims the promise, "The steps of a good man 
are ordered by the Lord." 

He was not unsusceptible to defeat and victory. 
He felt keenly the injustice done by the critics of 
Admiral Dewey and expected similar treatment, and 
so expressed himself even while at his high tide of 
popularity. At an entertainment on board the ship 
when ex-President Roosevelt was returning from 
Africa, Homer Davenport told of a cartoon he had 
drawn in defense of Admiral Dewey while the bitter 
criticism was at its height. Dewey, seeing the car- 
toon, sent word that he wanted to see Mr. Davenport, 
and greeting him, immediately threw himself on the 
"sofa in a paroxysm of weeping." Mrs. Dewey ex- 
cused him, explaining that the public abuse had sent 
the Admiral near to nervous prostration. She said, 
"We had decided to go to Europe, never to set foot 
on American soil again, and had actually packed 
our trunks when we saw your cartoon. We have 
now decided to stay in America." 

Mr. Roosevelt heard Mr. Davenport repeat this 



( 



DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 189 

story and followed him on the ship program, paying 
high praise to the Admiral. Lawrence Abbott, who 
happened to be with him, writes that after the ad- 
dress : 

I happened to be next to him, and immediately on taking 
his seat he turned to me and recalling the numerous times 
in the month or two preceding in which he had remarked 
that he was "going down like Dewey" — said, sotto voce, 
"Lawrence, they may treat me like Dewey, but I'll tell you 
one thing, I shall neither weep nor shall I go to Europe." 

He felt deeply that every American citizen should 
enter politics. He had contempt for the man who 
shirked in public affairs. So he said : 

Again, when a man is heard objecting to taking part in 
politics because it is "low" he may be set down as either 
a fool or a coward; it would be quite as sensible for a 
militiaman to advance the same statement as an excuse for 
refusing to assist in quelling a riot {American Ideals, 
p. 111). 

He believed that what was due "Caesar" should be 
rendered him as God's due should be rendered him. 
Lawrence Abbott, whose intimacy with Mr. Roose- 
velt on his journey through Europe gives him a right 
to speak, asserts that Mr. Roosevelt did not want to 
enter politics again but hoped to "retire to Saga- 
more Hill and devote himself to his literary pur- 
suits." But obedience to his sense of political duty 
drew him in again. It was Governor Charles E. 
Hughes who finally persuaded him to take the first 
step and help pass the Direct Primary bill which 
ultimately led him to be the candidate for State 



190 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Convention chairman against Vice-President Sher- 
man. 

He wrote Senator Lodge that he would gladly have 
gone into such a contest twenty years before, but 
that an ex-President ought never to have been com- 
pelled to go into such a contest. He affirmed that 
while such ^'political business" was utterly repug- 
nant to him, nevertheless he could not stay out of 
it when he saw that the interests of the decent peo- 
ple were at stake. 

In referring to America's task in the Philippines, 
in the speech nominating William McKinley for 
President, he said: 

Is America a weakling to shrink from the world-work to 
be done by the world powers? ... No! we challenge the 
proud privilege of doing the work that Providence allots 
us, and we face the coming years high of heart and resolute 
of faith that to our people is given the right to win 
such honor and renown as has never yet been granted to the 
peoples of mankind. 

Mr. Roosevelt had much to do with our presence 
in the Philippines since he, as assistant secretary of 
the navy, brought the fleet to efficiency, picked 
Dewey, and gave him orders to go to Manila and take 
the islands. All now admit that our entrance was 
providential, since it put us into world affairs and 
made it natural for us to join in the World War and 
help save civilization, as well as secure an influence 
which, if wisely used, may help bring permanent 
peace everywhere. 

Furthermore, our ability to rule so successfully in 



DUTIES FEABLESSLY PEHFOHMED 191 

the Philippines by Christian methods disproved the 
claim of Japan that only Prussian "might" could 
civilize such people as the Koreans, blood brothers 
to the Filipinos. This example of successful admin- 
istration may have helped Japan to change her 
tactics. 

All of these things also help establish the neces- 
sity of "foreign mission" work. If we must fight 
for the brotherhood, then we must also send the 
truth which will bring men to act like brothers. 
Mr. Roosevelt had warmest sympathy with the 
"foreign" work of the church. 

George H. Payne, Editor of the Forum, tells of a 
trip to Boston with Mr. Roosevelt on the day after 
his decision to be a candidate for the nomination in 
1912, when "he was a very sad man" because duty 
compelled his candidacy. On receiving enthusiastic 
assurances of success he replied, ^It may be possible, 
but we must be prepared to lose — it is our duty to 
make the fight' " 

Mr. Roosevelt was so clean and straight that he 
put full confidence in entire frankness. Mr. Bishop 
told the writer of an enemy's attempt to misuse his 
own remark that Mr. Roosevelt had a "boy's mind" 
to break their friendship. What Mr. Bishop said 
was, "What he thinks, he says at once, thinks aloud, 
like a boy." The trouble-maker, a fellow police com- 
missioner, reported him to Mr. Roosevelt as saying, 
"You have a boy's mind and it may never be devel- 
oped." Mr. Bishop was right, for Mr. Roosevelt put 
a simple trust in open honesty. 

In referring to a group of Wall Street men who 



192 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

were determined that he should not be nominated in 
1904 he said that after he had uncovered their secret 
efforts to displace him they were helpless, for while 
they seemed to have power when working ^'under 
cover" they became "quite helpless when fighting in 
the open by themselves." 

The sense of being right sustained him. Yet he 
was greatly cheered by letters such as came from 
Secretary Hay, who was in Germany seeking health 
after his nomination. 

Mr. Hay congratulated him on his nomination 
speech in Chicago in 1904, where he had combined 
"conscience and authority." Secretary Hay re- 
joiced that he had the courage to speak plainly to 
"Our master — the people." He noted the fact that 
it was easy to condemn corporations or peculiar 
groups, but that it took unusual courage, rarely 
found among public men, to call the people as a 
whole to; account. It greatly cheered Mr. Roose- 
velt to have it recognized that back of all his public 
work was a sincere devotion to righteousness, guided 
by a godly conscience. 

He insisted that honesty and character, and not 
political partiality, should decide fitness, and so he 
lays down the rule on becoming President that "no 
political, or business or social influence of any kind" 
would affect him when he was measuring the honesty 
or efficiency of a public official. Worth alone 
weighed with him; he trained himself to recognize 
it. 

He did not mince matters in dealing with un- 
worthy individuals. When a senator brought a 



DUTIES FEAKLESSLY PEKFORMED 193 

widely known "boss" to meet President Roosevelt, he 
received such a cold reception that he angrily 
blurted out, "You treat me as though I were a thief." 
The President replied, "Well, since you remind me 
of it, I know that you are one." 
' He always wanted the untarnished truth. When 
becoming Governor he determined to get an imj)artial 
report concerning the State canal graft. He ap- 
pointed two well-known Democratic lawyers to in- 
vestigate and instructed them to spare no one. After 
months at the task they reported that actual criminal 
acts could not be located and that therefore prosecu- 
tion was impossible, but that the whole management 
should be changed. The people knew this report 
was unbiased and were satisfied, though, otherwise, 
they would have required the designation of a 
specific culprit. 

While he asserted positively that, without flinch- 
ing, he would enforce the laws "against men of vast 
wealth just exactly as I enforce them against or- 
dinary criminals," he wanted the multimillionaire 
still to understand that this purpose was ultimately 
for his benefit. So he declared in a "Progressive" 
statement : 

I want my multimillionaire opponents to know that the 
things I propose are not intended to hurt them but to help 
them. What I am striving for is to help their children 
and their grandchildren; that in the future years they may 
find it possible to live in this country with safety. 

He refused to see the sister of a convicted officer 
of the army who wanted to plead for a pardon, say- 
ing that sympathy for the officer's "folks" must not 



194 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

interfere with the administration of a fair justice. 
He insisted that, after a careful survey of the evi- 
dence, he was sure the ofScer in question was "en- 
tirely incompetent to remain any longer in the serv- 
ice." He closes with : 

It would not be fair to do for one man who had influential 
friends anything I would not do for the man who has not 
a friend in the world. I try to handle the army and navy 
on the basis of doing absolute justice and showing no 
favoritism for any reason. 

He refused to single out the case of his son from 
those of the other boys who had fallen in France and 
to permit the empty notoriety coming from bringing 
the body home. He wrote General March: 

Mrs. Roosevelt and I wish to enter a most respectful but 
most emphatic protest against the proposed course as far as 
our son Quentin is concerned. We have always believed 
that 

"Where the tree falls, 
There let it lie." 

We know that many good persons feel entirely different, 
but to us it is painful and harrowing long after death, to 
move the poor body from which the soul has fled. We 
greatly prefer that Quentin shall continue to lie on the 
spot where he fell in battle and where the foeman buried 
him. 

After the war is over, Mrs. Roosevelt and I intend to 
visit the grave and then to have a small stone put up by 
us, but not disturbing what has already been erected to 
his memory by his friends and American comrades-in- 
arms. 

He was not a dreaming idealist but a practical 



DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 195 

doer of duty born of ideals. His motto as repeated 
to me by Mr. Bishop was, ^^I want to do the ideal 
thing, but if I cannot do it, I will come as near the 
ideal as possible." He greatly grieved some reform- 
ers because he refused to introduce a liquor local- 
option bill into the Legislature of which he was a 
member. He insisted that if he pushed it at that 
early date he would not only waste his time but 
would cheapen himself and lose his influence and 
ability to carry through other reforms promisingly 
pending at that time. 

He never acted without foresight. Kermit in 
writing about the African trip and his preparations 
for it records in the Metropolitan Magazine: 

It was often said of father that he was hasty and In- 
clined to go off at half-cock. There was never anyone who 
was less so. He would gather his information and make 
his preparations with painstaking care, and then when the 
moment came to act he was thoroughly equipped and pre- 
pared to do so with that lightning speed that his enemies 
characterized as rash hot-headedness. 

He carefully viewed all the possibilities when act- 
ing and knew that the Panama project might lose 
him the Presidency. When, therefore, this possibil- 
ity was predicted, while he was a candidate for the 
nomination in 1903, he replied in a letter to a 
Georgia man that the building of the Panama Canal 
ranked with the Louisiana Purchase in importance. 
He therefore admitted in this letter that if it were 
necessary for him to retire from public life as a re- 
sult of his insistence upon building the Canal, he 
would be glad to do so if the project was finally 



196 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

successfuL He explained that he said this because 
he believed that a public man ought not to be con- 
cerned about the length of his term, but about the 
accomplishment during the time he was in office. 
The whole letter enforced the fact that he was 
anxious to render public service and not to obtain 
or retain place by merely pleasing the people. 

He always carried the spirit of military obedience 
into his public work, serving the people as soldiers 
did the flag. That is why he was so ready to enter 
the actual fighting ranks. He compared his injury 
at Milwaukee to that of a sailor or soldier in actual 
combat. Hence, his instructions to the Rough Riders 
might fit anyone entering public service. When they 
were about to be mustered in and could still with- 
draw, he said : 

Once you are in, you've got to see it through. You've 
got to perform, without flinching, whatever duty is assigned 
to you, regardless of the difficulty or the danger attending 
it. You must know how to ride, you must know how to 
shoot, you must know how to live in the open. Absolute 
obedience to every command is your first lesson. No matter 
what comes, you mustn't squeal.^ 

He had the same self-effacing courage and confi- 
dence in acting for his nation. Venezuela had bor- 
rowed nine and one half million dollars in 1896 from 
a German bank to build a railway, and in 1901 was 
far behind with interest. Great Britain also had a 
claim for one and one half million, and Germany, 



iFrom The Life and Meaning of Theodore Roosevelt, by Eugene Thwing, p. 
97. 



DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 197 

adding a claim for damages for riots against her 
subjects in 1898, succeeded in securing the coopera- 
tion of Great Britain in blockading the ports of 
Venezuela and demanding immediate payment. On 
December 8, 1902, a German fleet destroyed Puerto 
Cabello. Secretary of State Hay's protest proved un- 
availing. President Roosevelt knew that Germany 
kept Great Britain from arbitrating the question. 
He sent for Holleben, the German ambassador, and 
told him that unless Germany consented to arbitrate 
within ten days, he would send Admiral Dewey and 
his fleet to protect Venezuelan territory. The am- 
bassador suggested this might mean war, but Mr. 
Roosevelt said it was too late to discuss the matter. 
When one week had elapsed and no word came, the 
President warned Holleben that Dewey would start 
in two days. The arrogant Kaiser, being notified, 
recalled the steel-like will of Mr. Roosevelt and, 
seeing that he meant business, immediately proposed 
arbitration. The President magnanimously allowed 
him to take the credit for initiating the proposal, 
but nevertheless kept Germany from getting a foot- 
hold on this continent. 

He had a very severe strain on his independent 
Americanism when he was compelled to refuse to visit 
the Pope. Vice-President Fairbanks had previously 
requested an audience with the Pope, who granted it 
on condition that he should not visit his own, the 
Methodist, church in Rome. Mr. Fairbanks indig- 
nantly refused. Ambassador Fleishman was re- 
quested to arrange an interview for Mr. Roosevelt 
with the Pope and was asked to notify Mr. Roose- 



198 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

velt that he would be welcomed on the same terms 
proposed to Vice-President Fairbanks. Mr. Roose- 
velt immediately answered that the ''Holy Father" 
had the right to make any conditions he thought 
best, but reminded him that, ''I must decline to make 
any stipulations or submit to any conditions which 
in any way limit my freedom of conduct." 

J. C. O'Laughlin, a newspaper man, having met 
Mr. Roosevelt in Egypt, became one of his secretaries 
on the tour ; and since he was a Roman Catholic, he 
volunteered to precede the party and undertake to 
arrange the interview. Merry Del Val, the papal 
secretary, is reported as follows by Mr. O'Laughlin 
in his book Through Europe with Roosevelt : 

Continuing, I said to Mr. O'Laughlin, "All I ask is this: 
Can you assure me that Mr. Roosevelt will de facto not go 
to the Methodists, thus leaving aside the question of what 
he may consider to be his rights in the matter?" 

Mr. Roosevelt interpreted this to be discreditable 
double-dealing and deception. In speaking about it 
he said that Merry Del Val told Mr. O'Laughlin that 
he could have the "audience" with the Pope if he 
would secretly agree not to visit the Methodists 
while it would be publicly announced that there had 
been no such agreement. He imagined that this 
would save the ex-President's ''face." Mr. Roose- 
velt then concludes that even a ^'Tammany boodle 
alderman" would not have dared to make such a 
proposal. He did not blame the Catholic Church as 
a whole, for evidently the church was not to blame. 
It is as foolish to blame the Protestant Church for 



DUTIES FEAKLESSLY PERFORMED 199 

what a few leaders do as it is to blame the Catholic 
Church in the same way. 

Few Presidents have had more intimate friends 
among priests and laymen in the Catholic Church, 
and they had aided him greatly. It took real courage 
to risk their enmity. But his impartial spirit would 
not permit him to make such an unfair bargain. 

Mr. Van Valkenburg said to me : 

Mr. Roosevelt hated fewer people than anyone I ever 
knew. He was not able to cherish personal animosities. 
He attacked individuals only as representatives of a dan- 
gerous idea or organization. 

He always counted himself the spokesman or repre- 
sentative of a ^'cause" and dedicated himself so com- 
pletely to it that even his warmest personal feelings 
were not, as a rule, allowed to influence or retard 
him. 

Gladstone had almost as stormy a career as Mr. 
Roosevelt. Once when asked the source of his regu- 
lar poise he took the interrogator into his bedroom 
and pointed to a Scripture verse which faced him 
every morning. It was: ''Thou wilt keep him in 
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because 
he trusteth in thee." Something similar doubtless pre- 
served Mr. Roosevelt, for his faith was as solid and 
his knowledge of the Scriptures as intimate. In a 
heartening letter to Kermit on December 3, 1904, 
we catch a vision of his sustaining "faith." He urges 
him not to despair because at various times in school 
and in business '^fortune will go against anyone." 
pe urges him to keep up his courage and keep 



200 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

pegging away and things will ''always take a turn 
for the better in the end." He writes in the same 
vein to "Ted," who has struck a ''blue" time at school. 
He remarks that as one grows older, "the bitter and 
sweet" follow each other pretty closely. We must, 
he urges, "grin and bear it" and "flinch" seldom but 
keep earnestly at our work until luck changes. 

Dean Lewis illustrates Mr. Roosevelt's im- 
perturbable poise by describing a visit to him during 
the Chicago Convention, when it took him twenty 
minutes to struggle through the jams in the hotel, 
which were shouting, "We want Teddy," to get to 
his room. The roar of the crowds inside and out 
of the hotel, together with the playing of half a dozen 
bands, did not move him. He found Mr. Roosevelt 
alone, sitting in a rocking chair, reading. "As I came 
in he looked up quietly, and I saw that the book 
which he held in his hand was Herodotus, the Greek 
historian." Rabbi Menzes, in speaking of the un- 
ruffled manner in which Roosevelt received criticism, 
likened him to Lincoln, who once said: 

If I were to try to read, much less to answer, all the at- 
tacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for 
any other business. I do the very best I can, and I intend 
to keep on doing so to the end. If the end brings me out 
all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. 
If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was 
right would make no difference! 

He did not fear death in the path of duty but was 
ready to meet it as an incident in the regular course 
of life or as a price to be paid in battling for the 
right. The loss of Quentin without doubt hastened 



DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 201 

his own demise; but when it was reported, his un- 
selfish message was : 

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none 
are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and 
the duty of life. Both life and death are part of the 
"Great Adventure." 

He had earlier made the same heroic declaration 
when it seemed certain that duty to the public would 
ultimately compel him to enter the Presidential con- 
test in 1912, when he was trying to avoid it. He said : 

The right motto for any man is "Spend and be spent," 
and if, in order to do a job worth doing from the public 
standpoint, he must pay with Ms own life, actual life on 
the field of battle, or political life in civic affairs, he must 
not grudge the payment. . . . My attitude is not a pose; I 
am acting as I do because, according to my lights, I am 
endeavoring, in a not too-easy position, to do what / believe 
the interests of the people demand. 

He would refuse nothing which divine guidance 
(''lights") imposed. He was a man of prayer and 
doubtless found the light that did not fail. He was 
led through the burdens and dangers of the cam- 
paign of 1912 into his most unpopular period. But 
he walked on unafraid and was "led" finally to his 
most influential period, that of the war days. He was 
as calm through the days of jeering as through 
those of cheering. 

Mrs. Robinson said to me: 

My brother had no fear of death in the path of duty. 
He never thought of it as a dark door. He believed in 
divine guidance. He did not define it or talk about it ex- 



202 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

cept as he would call it, "according to my light." But, fol- 
lowing this, he never feared the ultimate outcome. 

Julian Street, who knew him for years and was 
frequently with him during the last days, writing in 
Collier's, said that he never even heard him mention 
death until the last year before his demise. He then 
concludes that his reference to it must have come 
from ''a premonition that the end was perhaps nearer 
than those about him supposed." Continuing, he 
describes Mr. Roosevelt as he lay in the hospital a 
few days after his operation, reading a book when he 
remarked, ^'Lying here, I have often thought how 
glad I would be to go now if by doing so I could 
only bring the boys back safe to Mrs. Roosevelt." 

He indeed avoided no task but lived every day as 
though it were his last. Though his health was 
broken, he would not admit it, but drove his flagging 
strength to the limit in efforts to speed up the war. 
He gave the keynote speech in Maine, writing it 
while on a bed of pain, addressed the Republican 
State Convention on the very day that Quentin was 
killed, and when his sorrow almost crushed him 
earnestly urged the reelection of Mayor Mitchel, and 
supported, in a great speech at Carnegie Hall, the 
reelection of Governor Whitman. His last appear- 
ance was to deliver an address in honor of a Negro 
Red Cross unit. On the great day of rejoicing — 
Armistice Day — he was compelled to return to the 
hospital with the acute pain of inflammatory rheu- 
matism. But he mended sufficiently to spend his day 
of delight, Christmas, with children and grandchil- 



DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED 203 

dren at Oyster Bay. He spent his last evening with 
his family and at eleven retired, asliing his personal 
attendant, James Amos, to ''put out the light." At 
four o'clock Amos noticed unnatural breathing, but 
when he reached his side he was gone. His favorite 
text was, ''And walk humbly with God." This faith- 
ful disciple and good soldier did so, and "was not, for 
God took him," even as he did Enoch of old. Such 
an end well fitted such a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 
The Hon. James M. Beck well said at a memorial 
service, "We cannot believe that a beneficent God, 
who in physical nature permits nothing to be wasted, 
should permit the destruction of such a soul." Only 
pigmies can stand in the presence of this pure and 
serviceable soul and declare that death destroyed 
him. He who died on Calvary and rose on Easter 
morn so real that sincere souls recognized him was 
indeed the "first fruits." 

This chapter may well close with the words of the 
comrade-son, Kermit, who wrote for the Metro- 
politan : 

When In a little town In Germany my brother and I got 
the news of my father's death, there kept running through 
my head with monotonous insistency Kipling's lines: 

"He scarce had need to doff his pride 

Or slough the dross of earth, 
E'en as he trod that day to God 

So walked he from his birth 
In simpleness and gentleness and 

Honor and clean mirth." 

That was my father, to whose comradeship and guidance 
So many of us look forward in the Happy Hunting 
Grounds (Metropolitan Magazine, October, 1920). 



^ 



CHAPTER X 
PREACHED AND PRACTICED HIGH IDEALS 

"As you know, my whole concern at this time is practi- 
cally the same concern that Amos and Micah and Isaiah 
had for Jerusalem nearly three thousand years ago." — 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, 
and show my people their transgression, and the house of 
Jacob their sins. — Isaiah 58. 1. 

*' X AM charged with being a preacher. Well, I 
I suppose I am. I have such a bully pulpit," 
-■- said Mr. Roosevelt, referring, of course, to his 
great political audiences. He was afraid, however, 
in claiming to be a preacher, of being counted pre- 
sumptuous or of seeming to lay claim to a peculiar 
abundance of an artificial piety which some people 
believe should characterize the preacher. 

Mr. Loeb said to me: "Mr. Roosevelt was essen- 
tially a preacher of righteousness. He was a little 
sensitive, however, about having that title applied 
to him lest people would think of him more as a 
talker than a doer." 

After declaring to Dr. Iglehart that the Christian 
ministry was the "highest calling in the world," he 
said: 

I consider it my greatest joy and glory that, occupying 
a most exalted position in the nation, I am enabled simply 

204 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 205 

and sincerely to preach the practical moralities of the Bible 
to my fellow countrymen (Iglehart, p. 297). 

Gifford Pinchot said to me : 

Roosevelt was the greatest preacher of righteousness in 
modern times. Deeply religious beneath the surface, he 
made right living seem the natural thing, and there was 
no man beyond the reach of his preaching and example. 
In the sight of all men he lived the things he taught, and 
millions followed him because he was the clear exemplar 
of his teaching. He wanted results more than anything 
else and so acquired a remarkable directness of speech. 

Senator Lodge traced his exhortatory gifts back to 
his ancestors when he said of Mr. Roosevelt : 

The blood of some ancestral Scotch Covenanter or of some 
Dutch Reformed preacher facing the tyranny of Philip of 
Spain was in his veins, and with his large opportunities 
and his vast audiences he was always ready to appeal for 
justice and righteousness. 

Jane Addams said he was a "veritable preacher 
of social righteousness with the irresistible eloquence 
of faith sanctified by work." 

The European Addresses delivered during his re- 
turn trip from Africa were practically ^'sermons," 
and Lawrence Abbott says in his Introduction to 
the book which contains them, ^'I call them sermons 
because he himself uses the phrase, 'I preach/ " and 
he further on proves their right to this designation 
when he says : 

And yet the Sorbonne lecture, delivered by invitation of 
♦he officials of the University of Paris, . . . saturated as 



206 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

it was with moral ideas and moral exhortations, was a com- 
plete success. 

And again: "The speech was an appeal for moi^al 
rather than for intellectual or material greatness." ^ 

He was so strenuous in his phrases and figures 
concerning America's unwillingness to enter the war 
that the newspapers asked him to modify them. He 
refused and explained to Van Valkenburg : "As you 
know, my whole concern at this time is practically 
the same concern that Amos and Micah and Isaiah 
had for Jerusalem nearly three thousand years ago." 

He was not materialistic but spiritual in esti- 
mating values. When ready to leave the Presidency, 
a score of propositions came to him. One corpora- 
tion offered him one hundred thousand dollars a 
year to act as its president. But he turned them all 
down to become associated with a clergyman (Lyman 
Abbott), in whom he had great confidence, on a re- 
ligious paper. The Outlook, at one thousand dollars 
a month. He did so because its atmosphere was con- 
genial. He here frequently discussed religious sub- 
jects and always gave his contributions a high moral 
tone. 

He was very much afraid of commercializing his 
personality and thus tincturing the purity of his 
messages. Mr. McGrath told me that he refused 
fabulous sums for Chautauquas, "because it looked 
to him as though he were capitalizing his career, 
which he said did not belong to himself but to the 
people." 

^Lawrence Abbott, African and European Addresses, p. 23, Introduction. 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 207 

Mrs. Henry A. Wise- Wood, with a woman's insight, 
saw this element in him when she said : 

Roosevelt is to the mind what the tuning fork is to the 
ear. When one wishes to strike the true note of American- 
ism, he needs only to touch Roosevelt as the choirmaster 
touches his tuning fork. 

He had that subtle, spiritual something which is 
as elusive and yet is as real as the fragrance of a vio- 
let. It was the result of a carefully guarded and 
nourished spiritual life. It was the basis for his 
sturdy championship of right, as love is for the 
courage the frail female exhibits in defense of her 
young. Gififord Pinchot endeavors to explain it 
when he asks: ''What explains his power? Life is 
the answer," and then after describing his happy 
spirit, his clean life, his sturdy activities, and his 
keen sensitiveness ''to every phase of human exist- 
ence," he concludes, "In Roosevelt, above all men of 
his time, the promise of the Master was fulfilled: 
'I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might 
have it more abundantly.' " 

As a boy, he was taught to listen to a sermon so 
that afterward he could reproduce its outline and 
discuss the legitimacy of its Scripture basis. And so 
he learned to test a preacher's effectiveness. Mrs. 
Robinson described to me the family Sunday school 
in her childhood home : 

Every Sunday afternoon at five o'clock we had a Sunday 
school in our own home. Father presided as teacher and 
the children of our household formed the class. Each child 
had a personally owned Bible. All had attended church 



208 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

that morning and the first matter for discussion was the 
sermon we had heard. It was the duty of every one of us 
to bring in an abstract of that sermon, and the boy or girl 
who had the best one was highly praised by our father; 
that was a great prize. We would then look up the Scrip- 
ture and the context would be explained, and we would 
discuss it freely, reading selections from our own Bibles. 
It was a cheery, happy hour, enriched by our father, who 
thus made sermon-hearing very attractive and profitable. 

^^Right" standards were imbedded in his very na- 
ture. William Bayard Hale followed Mr. Roosevelt 
through every detail of his life in the White House 
for a whole week and then tried to describe the tre- 
mendous amount of tasks performed, and concludes : 
^' 'I couldn't do it otherwise/ the President said to 
me when I expressed my astonishment at the candor 
and publicity that prevailed. ... 'I rest everything 
on the righteousness of my cause.' " 

He gave himself utterly to everything he advo- 
cated. Just before the editor of the Paris Matin re- 
turned from a visit to this country, he asked Mr. 
Roosevelt if he had any message and he replied : 

I have no message for the French people. I have given 
them the best I had [his four sons]. But if they speak of 
me over there, tell them my only regret is that I could not 
give them myself. 

He was always literally ready to give his life for 
a cause as did the early martyrs. Albert Shaw, in 
referring to Mr. Roosevelt's first '^stumping" tour in 
the interests of President McKinley, traces his ef- 
fectiveness to conscientiousness : 

He was not naturally a good public speaker, but in the 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 209 

course of this tour, through sheer earnestness, sincerity, 
and energy, he won his audiences and acquired his reputa- 
tion — always afterward sustained — of being a very effective 
campaign speaker. 

Mr. Roosevelt was constantly inspired and sus- 
tained by his high ideals, which he believed would 
ultimately prevail and for which he fought. 

To a Christian mission school in Luxor, Egypt, 
he said, ^'A practical man without ideals is a curse. 
The greater his ability, the greater the curse." In 
closing a chapter in his AutoUograpJiy , which de- 
scribes his romps with the children and the alto- 
gether happy home life he enjoyed, he enforced the 
fact that no success approached that which is open 
to men and women "who have the right ideals." 
This group, he says, will see that the ordinary every- 
day ''homely things" ''count most." 

He had never met Mr. Riis until that newspaper 
reporter had printed his ideals of helpfulness in a 
book titled. How the Other Half Lives. That book 
drew these two men together as a magnet does a 
needle, and Mr. Roosevelt called on Mr. Riis and 
offered to help. Explaining the call, he said, "I be- 
lieve in realizable ideals and in realizing them, in 
preaching what can be practiced and then in prac- 
ticing them." Those were the sort Mr. Riis had of- 
fered. 

Mr. Roosevelt's intense conviction is shown in a 
sentence in The Great Adventure : "Unless men are 
willing to fight and die for great ideals, . . . ideals 
will vanish and the world will become one huge sty 
of materialism." 



210 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He developed this idea in his epochal address at 
Carnegie Hall just after he had agreed to enter the 
primaries against President Taft : 

In order to succeed, we need leaders of inspired idealism, 
leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream 
greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who 
can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning 
souls. The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, 
is but an instrument to be used until broken and then to be 
cast aside; and if he is worth his salt, he will care no more 
when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent 
where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be 
won. In the long fight for righteousness the watchword 
for all of us is, "Spend and be spent." It is of little matter 
whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall 
not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. 

Here is the spirit of a Paul who was willing to be 
^'offered up." 

The Hon. James M. Beck said ; 

When he entered public life he found this nation sunk 
in a sordid materialism, due to our amazing prosperity as 
a nation, which had somewhat obscured the great ideals 
to which the republic was dedicated. Roosevelt, in the 
spirit of an ancient prophet, preached the higher life, both 
for nation and for individual. 

In The Great Adventure he pleads that those who 
cannot go into the trenches shall 

realize the need for a loftier idealism than we have had 
in the past. . . . There has been in the past in this country 
far too much of that gross materialism which, in the end, 
eats like an acid into all the finer qualities of our souls. 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 211 

The news of Quentin's death came on the morning 
of the day when he had agreed to preside and make 
the keynote address at the Republican State Con- 
vention at Saratoga. In spite of his heart-breaking 
sorrow, he went to the convention, saying: "It is 
my duty. I must go." He followed the set speech 
with an extemporaneous exhortation in which, 
among other things, he said : 

Our young men have gone to the other side, Very many 
of them to give up in their joyous prime all the glory and 
all the beauty of life to pay the greatest price of death in 
battle for a lofty ideal. Now when they are doing that, 
cannot we men and women at home make up our minds to 
try to insist upon a lofty idealism here at home? . . . 
I am asking for the idealism which will demand that every 
promise expressed or implied be kept — that every pro- 
fession of decency, of devotion that is lofty in words should 
be made good in deeds. 

His sorrow, the product of devotion to ideals, spurred 
and did not retard him in urging others to follow 
them. 

Mr. Hagedorn carried a letter to "Bill" Sewall 
from Mr. Roosevelt in which he said : "I want you 
to tell him everything good, bad, and indifferent. 
Don't spare me the least bit." "Bill" then wrote, 
"I could not see a single thing that was not fine in 
Theodore." After speaking of the firm advocacy of 
his convictions which some people called stubborn- 
ness, "Bill" emphasizes Mr. Roosevelt's teachableness 
but admits that "he had strong convictions and was 
willing to stand up for them," and could not be 
shaken out of them. He was inspired and stabilized 



212 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

by his convictions. He kept corrupt leaders nervous ; 
for if he saw a thing that looked wrong, he spoke out 
loud and proposed a remedy and pushed to get it into 
vogue, no matter who was affected. 

He was always consistent and declared : 

Any man who preaches to others should rightly be re- 
quired to show that he has himself, according to his power, 
acted upon the doctrines he preaches and that he has not 
lightly changed them or lightly adopted them. 

Since he "preached" such doctrines critics won- 
dered if he really practiced them. 

One day Mr. Roosevelt asked George H. Payne if 
he had seen the charge of intemperance which had 
been made against him. He answered in the nega- 
tive and suggested that it was not worthy of his 
notice. Mr. Roosevelt then replied : 

That might he if it were not for the fact that day after 
day I am receiving letters like this one that I have in my 
hand, from mothers saying that they had taught their boys 
to look up to me, and that it was a shock to them to learn 
that I had been unfaithful to my trust. I owe them a refu- 
tation. 

Lawrence Abbott calls attention to the fact that 
in the "intemperance" libel suit, under regular legal 
procedure, Mr. Roosevelt might have compelled his 
accuser to submit his evidence and when he failed 
to prove his charges, merely collect damages. But 
instead, he opened his whole life for complete in- 
spection, so that the public could see whether there 
was any basis for the charges. That such was his 



HIGH IDEALS PKEACHED 213 

sole purpose is shown by his request to the court 
that the convicted owner of the newspaper who had 
made the scurrilous charges should be relieved from 
a heavy penalty after he had apologized. 

Harvey D. Hinman was the Progressive can- 
didate for Governor of New York in 1904 and was 
bitterly opposed by the ''machine." Mr. Roosevelt, 
in supporting him, charged that William Barnes, 
the Republican "boss," had formed an alliance with 
the Democrats in the interests of political and busi- 
ness crookedness. Barnes then sued him for libel. 
In collecting evidence Mr. Barnes had the advantage 
of a long and intimate acquaintance in Albany. His 
information went back to the days of Piatt, with 
whom he had worked. He had access to Mr. Roose- 
velt's 150,000 letters, which his lawj^ers scrutinized 
carefully. Mr. Roosevelt was kept on the grill of 
the witness stand for ten days. His memory was 
marvelous. Once they read a letter, written years 
before, with a bad implication to it, and Mr. Roose- 
velt asked, ''Isn't there an interlineation there in 
pen and ink which reads as follows ?" and he quoted 
words which banished all suspicion. They examined 
his relations with "Boss" Piatt and went through 
the campaign contributions of 1904 in trying to show 
that Mr. Roosevelt had dealt in crooked politics, but 
they failed to find a flaw or a misstep. 

Judge Andrews charged the jury to decide 
"whether there had been an alliance between Barnes 
and the Democratic leaders and whether Barnes had 
worked through a corrupt alliance between crooked 
politics and crooked business." "For two days the 



214 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

jury deliberated," says Dean Lewis, ''and then re- 
turned a verdict which accepted Roosevelt's state- 
ments as true." 

Mr. Roosevelt in his "thanks" to the jury, after 
they brought in a verdict, so expressed his apprecia- 
tion of the "obligation" you "men representing every 
sphere of political belief have put me under" : 

There is only one return that I can make, and that, I 
assure you, I will try to make to the best of my ability. 
I will try all my life to act in public and private affairs so 
that no one of you will have cause to regret the verdict you 
have given this morning. 

The trial consumed two months and cost Mr. Roose- 
velt personally fifty-two thousand dollars to defend 
his honesty against a "boss" who thought he could 
"break" him. No moral leader can speak confidently 
and effectively without the consciousness of recti- 
tude which sustained Mr. Roosevelt. 

Someone has said that a man may fight for his 
home but not for his "boarding" house. Mr. Roose- 
velt, desiring to perpetuate the nation, recognized 
the fact that abiding love of country could alone be 
insured by real homes built by a sacrifice and by 
owners desirous of having children in them. Hence, 
in France, while "preaching," he assailed the liberty 
allowed the lawless socialists, and in the same way 
arraigned the childless homes — both as dangerous 
diseases of the republic. 

He expressed his contempt for the dodger who re- 
fuses to be a parent by saying, "But the man or 
woman so cold as to know no passion and a brain 



HIGH IDEALS PKEACHED 215 

so shallow and selfish as to dislike children is in 
effect a criminal against the race." 

His known tenderness toward woman safeguards 
his exhortation concerning "motherhood." After en- 
forcing the necessity of every worthy man being 
gentle and unselfish toward his wife, he says, "But 
exactly as he must do his duty, so she must do her 
duty." He then explains that if the American race 
is to go forward, every normal home should endeavor 
to have at least four children in it, since many would 
not marry, others would be unwillingly deprived of 
offspring, and many children would die in infancy. 
He concludes : "I am sure you agree with me that 
no other success in life — not being President or 
being wealthy — can compare with the knowledge of 
men and women that they have done their duty and 
that their children and grandchildren rise up to call 
them blessed." 

In speaking to the French on "race suicide" he 
said: 

Even more important than ability to work, even more 
important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember 
that the chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall 
leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of 
blessings in biblical times and it is the crown of blessings 
now. 

It is difficult to condemn conditions in a country 
while an honored guest. But a genuine prophet dare 
not even then refrain, and so Mr. Koosevelt assailed 
the unrestrained Socialism prevalent in France: 

The deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a 



216 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

logical and extreme socialistic system could not be over- 
stated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce 
grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality, than any 
existing system.^ 

His fearless warning bore fruit; for the Briand 
ministry took heart and forbade a monster public 
demonstration already announced, with incendiary 
posters, to take place under the direction of the Revo- 
lutionary Group. For the first time in fifteen years 
the police and soldiers were authorized to use their 
arms in self-defense against this group. So his 
preaching bore prompt fruit. 

He spoke in the same unrestrained way in Egypt 
when, under the plea of a Nationalist movement, 
Boutras Pasha, the British representative, was as- 
sassinated. Two hundred students had surrounded 
Mr. Roosevelt's hotel and shouted fierce threats ; but, 
like the ancient prophets, he was unmoved. A won- 
derful welcome in London did not smother his preach- 
ing zeal, and so he dealt with the Egyptian question 
again and arraigned some of the side-stepping 
"statesmen" in Great Britain. ''While you have 
been treating all religions with studied fairness and 
impartiality," he said, "the Moslems have used this 
as a basis for an anti-foreign attack, so that they 
could destroy all religions but their own." He con- 
cluded : 

It was with this primary object of establishing order that 
you went into Egypt twenty-eight years ago. ... If you 
feel you have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not 
wish to establish and to keep order there, why then, by all 



^Lawrence Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 165. 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 217 

means get out of Egypt. ... If, as I hope, you feel that 
your duty to civilized mankind and your fealty to your own 
great traditions alike bid you stay, make the fact and your 
name agree. . . . Some nation must govern Egypt. I hope 
and believe that you will decide that it is your duty to be 
that nation.^ 

Though Mr. Roosevelt was charged with being a 
meddler in this ease, he never explained that his 
speech had been read and approved, with a request 
that he deliver it, by Sir Edward Grey, the foreign 
minister. 

He never gave any consideration to the effect of 
an act or address on his future but implicitly obeyed 
the inner voice. He admits that after he returned 
to the Legislature for the third term he found him- 
self unconsciously asking, ^'How will this or that af- 
fect my career?" and was for awhile tempted to trim, 
until one day, in utter disgust, he declared, "I will 
do my day's work as it comes along and let the ca- 
reer take care* of itself." 

He could not "do evil that good might come." Mr. 
Riis records him as saying : 

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of ex- 
pediency. ... As soon as a politician gets to the point of 
thinking that to be "practical" he has got to be base, he 
has become a noxious member of the body politic. That 
species of practicability eats into the moral sense of the 
people like a cancer. 

When urged by politicians to soften the prosecu- 
tion of the Negro soldiers guilty of the Brownsville 

»/6»d., p. 151. 



218 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

murders in order that the Negro voters might not 
be offended, he writes Silas McBee : 

As you know, I believe in practical politics, and, where 
possible, I always weigh well any action which may cost 
votes before I consent to take it; but in a case like this, 
where the issue is not merely one of naked right and wrong 
but one of vital concern to the whole country, I will not for 
one moment consider the political effect. 

Previous to his own campaign for the Presidency 
in 1904 he found crookedness and graft in the Post 
Office Department. The politicians suggested that 
a few guilty ones should be punished and the depart- 
ment then be quietly cleaned up. He refused to con- 
sider such a plan and put a Democrat in as one of 
the assistant investigators so that no whitewashing 
would be done. Among the crooks caught was a 
State senator in New York State. It happened that 
the chairman of the Republican State Committee was 
a partner in the firm that profited from this senator's 
crookedness and the ^^senator" warned Mr. Roose- 
velt that if the ''case" was not dropped, he would lose 
the State in 1904. Mr. Roosevelt wrote him that he 
was more interested in carrying the State than any- 
one else but that ''I will not let up on any grafter no 
matter what the political effect might be." 

The next year, a senator, afterwards expelled for 
dishonesty, wrote the President in the interests of a 
crooked client. 

He received the prompt information that President 
Roosevelt would under no "pressure" from political 
sources or because of "party expediency" refrain 



HIGH IDEALS PKEACHED 219 

from punishing any evildoer, "whether he belongs 
to my party or any other." 

He wrote a wonderful testimony in a private letter 
to his son Kermit, containing this sentence, "I 
never did one thing personally that was not as 
straight as a string." 

When his campaign for President was put on he 
picked Cortelyou as national chairman because "he 
will manage the canvass on a capable and also on 
an absolutely clean basis, and my canvass cannot be 
managed on any other lines either with propriety or 
advantage." 

One of the most crucial tests of Mr. Koosevelt's 
integrity came at the 1912 Chicago Convention. 
Only twenty-eight votes were needed to nominate 
him. One night a group of Southern delegates 
waited upon him and promised to give him thirty- 
two votes provided only that they then could vote 
with the "stand-patters" on organization. Mr. Koose- 
velt did not hesitate a moment but said in a clear 
voice : 

Thank the delegates you represent but tell them that I 
cannot permit them to vote for me unless they vote for all 
progressive principles for which I fought and by which 
I stand or fall. 

Mr. Van Valkenburg told me that Mr. Koosevelt 
said, "They don't seem to understand that I am not 
running for President but am standing for a prin- 
ciple." Another who was present said that "strong 
men broke down under the stress of that night." 
Some pleaded all night with him, insisting that once 



220 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

he was nominated, he could handle the situation and 
rid himself of the "stand-patters." But, finally, 
after answering all arguments and desiring to close 
the matter, he had to warn two or three persistent 
pleaders that though he loved them like brothers, 
yet if they continued their urging, it might bring 
about a break in their friendship, since he could not 
yield against his convictions. 

The Germans exasperated Mr. Roosevelt almost 
beyond endurance during the Barnes trial. Mr. 
Bowers, his chief counsel, had warned him against 
making any vigorous anti-German statements until 
the trial was over, since two of the jurors were Ger- 
man-Americans. News was suddenly brought that 
the Lusitania had been sunk. He tried hard to keep 
quiet and walked up and down the floor in his host's 
home in Syracuse. Finally he declared: "Well, it 
doesn't make any difference. It is more important 
that I be right than to win this suit." Awakened 
at midnight with a request for an interview, he gave 
the reporters a blistering indictment of the Germans. 
The next morning he told his counsel that he feared 
this interview would so alienate the two jurors as 
to insure losing the case, but concluded that it could 
not be helped if it did, since he must be true to his 
convictions whatever the cost, since his personal 
welfare "was second to the interests of the American 
people." 

He never gave way to pettishness. He vigorously 
opposed the nomination of James G. Blaine while a 
delegate to the National Convention, but returning 
to New York, he refused to bolt the ticket, saying. 



J 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 221 

^'I did my best and got beaten, and I propose to 
stand by the result.'' 

Mr. Van Valkenburg recounted to me a stirring 
incident that uncovered Mr. Roosevelt's methods to 
hear the call of duty and his answer to it ; 

I was in New York in conference with Frank Munsey 
and George W. Perkins when Mr. Roosevelt telephoned me 
that he wanted to see me at nine-thirty the next morning. 
We had all agreed that if Woodrow Wilson were nominated, 
the Progressives would have small chance. When I arrived 
at Oyster Bay Mr. Roosevelt said: 

"The whole family spent the afternoon yesterday in a 
conference as to whether I should accept the Progressive 
nomination. I told the children that it would mean social 
ostracism^ — friends of a lifetime would suspicion and 'cut' 
them; that it would embitter powerful business men who 
would impede and block their success. I told Mrs. Roose- 
velt that dear old Judge White would not call on her again, 
that Root and all the old crowd would forsake us. And I 
told them that it would all end in my defeat and loss of 
standing in the party. But after all this dismal picture, 
the family voted unanimously for me to run." 

Then he turned toward me and said: "Van, this ends 
my public career. I had hoped I m.ight serve the public 
for a long while. But duty calls and I must enter this 
fight as a soldier goes into battle and there risks his life. 
I am no better, and must be willing to 'die' for my country." 

Suddenly he turned toward the door and said, "Let me 
bring Edith in," and soon he came back hand in hand with 
Mrs. Roosevelt, like lovers that they were, and asked her 
to tell me about the decision. She recounted the incidents 
and added, "Though we know the outcome is defeat, I am 
serenely happy ; and whatever comes now, it is all right." 

It was holy ground on which we stood. Mr, Roosevelt 
accepted the call as God-sent and without question went 
forward in the way as he found it marked out, step by step. 



222 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He never considered his own interests. Mr. 
Thompson asked him what he thought his chances 
were to be nominated in 1916. He replied that if 
there had been any ''chance, I killed it by my tour of 
the West advocating preparedness and Americanism. 
The convention will adopt these issues; but when 
nominations are made a convention will always pass 
over a pioneer, he has made too many enemies, and 
will pick a ^safer' man." And he knew that fact 
when he started the tour. 

Mr. Roosevelt read character and so picked his 
associates. He usually forgave his adversaries, but 
Mr. Stoddard told me of a nationally known writer 
who had published a widely circulated article making 
serious charges against Mr. Roosevelt. Later he 
wanted to apologize and renew friendship, but Mr. 
Roosevelt was unwilling, saying: "He has known 
me eight or ten years in an intimate way. If when 
he thus knew me he could make such charges, he 
proves himself to have a character I dare not trust 
in the future." 

He had a very unusual test of his integrity when, 
as Governor, his warm friend, Jacob A. Riis, among 
many others, urged him to grant a woman murderer 
a reprieve, since it seemed revolting for a female to 
be executed. She had killed her stepdaughter with- 
out provocation and had tried to kill her husband. 
Governor Roosevelt eventually refused the request 
and wrote Mr. Riis, "Whatsoever I do, old friend, 
believe it will be because after painful groping I 
see duty in some given path." 

He had to fight constantly for his ideals. Even 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 223 

when police commissioner, he had politically blind 
associates who put policy before principle and so 
he said : 

I have endless petty rows with Fitch and Parker, very- 
irritating because so petty, hut very necessary; the battle 
for decent government must be won by just such inter- 
minable grimy drudgery. 

When it became necessary to form a new party 
Dean Lewis, who was on the ground, tells us : ^'The 
decision to form an independent party was made by 
Roosevelt and by no one else." He took responsi- 
bility promptly. 

With such a character, tireless energy, and ideals 
of service of course he moved the people and ulti- 
mately to action. He dedicated his magnetism to the 
service of humanity. John Burroughs tells about 
meeting a Catholic priest in Bermuda who had been 
on a platform in New England when Mr. Roosevelt 
spoke and who said, "The man had not spoken three 
minutes before I loved him, and had anyone tried tp 
molest him, I could have torn him to pieces." After 
the "libel" suit "Boss" Barnes heard Mr. Roosevelt 
speak at Carnegie Hall and was soon on his feet 
shouting and applauding. When reminded of it he 
replied, "No one can resist the magnetism of that 
man." 

Mr. Roosevelt was not beyond being moved him- 
self or he could not so easily have moved others. 
When he left Oyster Bay in the fall of 1905, follow- 
ing his inauguration as President, and after spend- 
ing the summer there, he had an unusually affecting 



224 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

experience. For the first time the village was deco- 
rated and the school children and neighbors accom- 
panied him to the train and sang, "Farewell to our 
neighbor, President Roosevelt," and "God be with 
you till we meet again." The New York Tribune 
said, "The President had tears in his eyes while he 
thanked his neighbors who gathered at the railroad 
station" to bid him farewell. He told them how 
much he "appreciated their demonstrations of friend- 
ship" and that "they have been very helpful to me." 
Mr. Taft, in his Introduction to Dean Lewis' 
Life of Theodore Roosevelt, tells of a cartoon that 
hung in Mr. Roosevelt's room at the White House, 

in which an old farmer with a pipe was seated in front of 
a fire reading a long executive message of the President, 
and underneath was the legend, "His favorite author." 
This cartoon contained the kernel of truth as to the atti- 
tude of the plain people in the country toward Theodore 
Roosevelt's ideals.^ 

He honestly loved the "people." 

Mr. Loeb, his secretary, told me that the first time 
Mr. Roosevelt saw this cartoon, he exclaimed: "By 
George, Billy, that's the fellow I have been trying 
to reach all my life. I hope the cartoon represents 
the fact !" Lawrence Abbott further illustrates his 
hold on the people when he tells about looking out 
the train window during the night and seeing farm- 
houses lighted with groups in front waving flags at 
the passing train. "It was as if they had waited up 



iFrom The Life of Theodore Roosevelt, by William Draper Lewis. Copy- 
right, by The John C. Winston Company. 



ff 




Undenvood & Underwood Stu 

THE EARNEST 



TREACHER" IN ACTION 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 225 

to bid a welcome and a good-by to a brother, though 
they knew he would be unseen and unseeing." 

Ciemenceau made an earnest plea to President 
Wilson to send Mr. Roosevelt over during the war 
since "he is an idealist, imbued with simple, vital 
idealism. Hence his infiuence on a crowd, his 'pres- 
tige,' to use the right expression." He paid for his 
power and he used it well. 

The New York Globe editorially regretted the fact 
that the laudations of Mr. Roosevelt centered their 
emphasis on the fact that his chief service was as a 
"preacher" — a ^'champion of moral ideals," while 
''it was as a doer of the word rather than as its 
preacher that our dead leader and friend wishes to 
be regarded as worthy." It is so easy to minimize 
the preacher as a mere theorist. It is forgotten that 
the preacher has always carried the torch and blazed 
the trail at every forward step mankind has taken. 
Moses had a slow tongue and was given Aaron to 
preach. Recall the leadership of such preachers as 
Elijah, who dethroned Baal and saved Israel ; John 
the Baptist, who prepared the way for the great 
Saviour ; Savonarola, who acted as surgeon to a cor- 
rupt church; the Revolutionary preachers, who 
whipped the slothful to enlist ; Henry Ward Beecher, 
the scorpion-like assailer of slavery; and the army 
of ridiculed pastors who gave us a "dry" America. 
Few men in history have had both the gift of the 
seer and that of the practical organizer as did Mr. 
Roosevelt. But he had to picture the "Promised 
Land" and exhibit the weakness of the enemy before 
he could get the people to go forward. 



226 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He early recognized that sins enervated both the 
individual and the nation. In speaking of the 
capable, well-disciplined army of Cromwell, he says, 
"No man swears but he pays his twelve pence; if he 
be drunk, he is set in the stocks or worse." 

His own habits proved his estimate of right living ; 
and while he tried to enforce their value, yet he never 
coerced anyone. Lawrence Abbott said to me, "Mr. 
Roosevelt so earnestly desired to help people find the 
road to spiritual success and happiness that he 
yearned over them with affection." He thus reached 
and aroused the best in them. 

"At no time was he a driver," said Mr. Pinchot 
to me. "He set an example in life and efforts and in- 
spired us to fullest endeavor to keep up with him." 

By encouragement and faith he really wrought 
many transformations among the wild characters 
he knew in the West. Mr. Loeb told me of a tough 
character with a prison record who joined the Rough 
Riders. He evidenced complete amendment in the 
army, and President Roosevelt later gave him an im- 
portant office. Someone said to the ex-tough, "The 
President has taken an awful chance on you," and he 
replied, "No, the Colonel's confidence in me is what 
is going to keep me straight." 

He worked similar transformations in the nation 
as a whole. Public Opinion said at the time of his 
death : 

It Is not merely that Mr. Roosevelt changed the laws — 
a man of smaller influence or a national legislature under 
no moral conviction might have done that; his great 
achievement was that he changed the mental attitude of 



HIGH IDEALS PREACHED 227 

the people and brought "big business" itself to repentance 
and to the ways of righteousness. 

Oscar Straus said to me that Theodore Roosevelt 
could appeal to the conscience of the people as could 
no other American except Lincoln. 

Professor Harry Thurston Peck had been severely 
arraigned by Mr. Roosevelt, and smarting under it, 
declared that when Mr. Roosevelt left the Presidency, 
his 

wish will no longer be law to a hundred thousand office 
holders. His denunciations and his eulogies will be listened 
to with only scant attention. ... It will be a strange thing 
for him to learn the lesson that the power which he exer- 
cises is the power of an office and not the power of an in- 
dividual man. 

Was he right? All agree that the last ten years 
of Mr. Roosevelt's life, while possessed of little po- 
litical power, were the most influential of his career. 

I once said to Colonel Roosevelt: 

You have done more for practical righteousness than any 
other one man in the last generation. You have preached 
but you have also backed it with such a clean and upright 
life that you could fight vigorously without fear of being 
"stopped" by a blow on a blemished place in your character. 
No man has put more righteousness into laws and practices 
than you. 

He listened calmly but his eye lighted with 
pleasure as he bowed his appreciation. And that 
fact explains the effectiveness of his preaching. 



CHAPTER XI 

WAS HE A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' 
TESTIMONY 

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, 
whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good 
profession before many witnesses. — 1 Tim. 6. 12. 

MR. ROOSEVELT'S friends all agree that he 
was very reticent in talking about or dis- 
cussing the subject of personal religion. 

Not a single influential friend has hesitated to de- 
clare the conviction that Mr. Roosevelt's religion was 
an indispensable part of his being. As Dr. Nicholas 
Murray Butler put it, ^'He never paraded his re- 
ligion or his faith but both were very fundamental 
with him." 

His fear of using religion as a cloak made him go 
almost to the other extreme of neglecting to posit 
the fact that his ideals and his strenuous righteous- 
ness were both the fruits of his faith. He also so 
stressed the necessity of applying the doctrine of 
James, "Show me your faith by your works," that 
some were likely to forget that his "faith" was fed 
by worship, Bible study, prayer, and Christian as- 
sociates as roots are by soil, sunshine, and moisture 
if a tree bears fruit. He did use the "means of grace" 
as food for his faith but so unobtrusively that people 
did not notice it and hence often lost sight of the 
fact that he was a full-orbed "Christian." 

228 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 229 

^ So many of the people who were constantly asso- 
ciated with him were so marked as Christians that 
they are qualified to recognize and affirm Mr. Roose- 
velt's discipleship. This chapter will therefore deal 
largely with the "testimony" of his friends which 
came in answer to personal requests. 
In talking with me Kermit said : 

It was inherent in father to be reserved about the subject 
of personal religion. He claimed that actions "talked" in 
religion as in everything else. These told of his faith in 
a clear way. 

Mrs. Robinson also affirmed; 

My brother seldom talked about doctrinal subjects in re- 
ligion. He had a profound faith which he believed would 
show itself in his actions. In my judgment he led in an 
absolute and exact way the life that is laid down for a 
Christian. He believed that a Christian life was the one to 
lead. He believed absolutely in the value and necessity 
of churches and that worship on Sunday was helpful and 
essential. 

In answer to a letter, President Harding, himself 
an ardent member of the Baptist Church, wrote : 

I am convinced that Theodore Roosevelt had a devout be- 
lief in God and though a consistent churchman he never 
paraded his belief, but it was evident in his writings, in his 
speeches, and in his conduct. His clean personal life is the 
best proof of his faith and belief. That he was a close 
student of the Bible was but natural since he was ever a 
seeker after truth. Unquestionably he believed in prayer, 
not only as a means of grace but as a personal help and 
consolation. 



230 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

General Leonard Wood understood Mr. Roosevelt 
as well as any man who is alive and is himself an 
earnest member of the Episcopal Church. He wrote 
me: 

Theodore Roosevelt was a true Christian. He believed 
in God and that all peoples must have faith, that a nation 
forsaking its religion is a decadent nation. He w^as a 
churchgoer as an evidence of his faith and for purpose of 
worship. His life, his ideals, and his acts established his 
faith in God. He was a reader of the Bible. I have no recol- 
lection of hearing him take the name of God in vain. I be- 
lieve that he gathered many of his ethical ideas from the 
Scriptures. His courage was maintained by his sense of 
righteousness and justice. He was clean in thought and 
speech; a man of broad sympathy; limited neither by race 
nor creed. He was a doer of good works and a strenuous 
advocate of those principles which are laid down in the 
commandments. 

Ex-President, now Chief Justice Taf t in a personal 
letter among other things says, '^Of course, he was 
a Christian, and a broad Christian at that." That is 
high tribute when their relations are recalled. 

^'Bill" Sewall was raised in the Congregational 
Church, and told me : "My grandfather was a Con- 
gregational minister, and he had a near relative who 
put seven Sewall brothers into the Congregational 
ministry." He himself did not join the church be- 
cause of the aggravating friction between the only 
two churches in his small home town, yet he af- 
firmed a simple and complete faith in God. Four of 
his five children are already members. He walked 
many hours with Mr. Roosevelt in the silences of 
the woods and on the wide prairies and knew the 



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'BILL" SEWALL'S LETTER DESCRIBING MR. ROOSE- 
VELT'S RELIGION. 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 231 

soul of his friend. His sweet-spirited letter is re- 
produced just as he wrote it: 

January 7, 1921 
Dear Sir: 

Please pardon me for my delay. I hope it has not both- 
ered you. Your letter came about the time we were moving 
out of our camps and I forgot to answear but will be glad 
to do so now. I think he read the Bible a great deal I never 
saw him in formal prayer but as prayer is the desire of 
heart think he prayed without ceasing for the desire of his 
heart was always to do right. I am not a very religious man 
but believe in real Christianity. I judge Roosevelt by his 
life and the Bible tells us by their fruits you shall know 
them I once heard him say he joined the church on ac- 
count of his example. I think his early training probably 
did have an influence on him. I think he did attend church 
when he was where he could and I think you have the right 
title for your book now if what I have written is of any 
use to you I am glad and hope it is not too late. 

Very truly yours, 

W. W. Sewall 

Ex-Secretary of War Colonel H. L. Stimson, who 
as the United States district attorney under Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's appointment did yeomanlike service 
in enforcing laws in New York, wrote me : 

The impression made upon me by personal Intercourse 
with him, extending over nearly a quarter of a century, 
left in my mind a very strong impression that he was a 
Christian and that the great decisions of his life were con- 
trolled by the standards of the Christian religion. 

Governor Henry J. Allen, himself a very active 
member of the Methodist Church, and a stanch sup- 
porter of Mr. Roosevelt in the darkest days, testifies : 



232 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

If anybody had ever asked me if Colonel Roosevelt were 
a Christian, I would have instantly replied that he was, 
Just on the knowledge I had of him, his character, his good 
influence, his habit of church attendance, and his clean 
personal life. 

Ex-Senator Beveridge replied to my letter : 

I am quite sure that Colonel Roosevelt was a Christian, 
and my evidence would be his daily life and conversation, 
with both of which I was closely familiar for many years. 

The Hon. James R. Garfield, the son of the mar- 
tyred President, who was his friend in social as 
well as state matters, gave answer : 

I know of few men who live a more truly Christian life 
than Mr. Roosevelt lived. He believed in church member- 
ship and attendance at church and acted in accordance with 
that belief. His family life reflected his own beliefs in a 
most remarkable way. 

The Hon. William Allen White, of Kansas, one 
of the most earnest friends of Mr. Roosevelt, af- 
firmed : 

If anyone asked me if Roosevelt was a Christian, I should 
say emphatically "Yes, the highest type of a Christian, 
a Christian fit to stand with Paul and Luther." 

Mr. Van Valkenburg, the editor of the Philadel- 
phia North American and a ^'discerning" friend, told 
me: 

To my mind he was the highest type of the Christian 
man. It seemed not only necessary but perfectly natural 
for him to be a Christian. Religion was a matter so thor- 
oughly settled in his own mind that it did not admit of 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 233 

any discussion and was not a subject of controversy. He 
never intruded his belief upon others but proved his faith 
by good deeds and let that suffice. 

J. J. Leary, so long one of his newspaper friends, 
said in a note to me : 

There never was a cleaner Christian in thought and in 
deed than Colonel Roosevelt. He not only was clean him- 
self but he insisted on those about him being clean. For ex- 
ample, T. R. was not the man to tell or tolerate the telling 
in his presence of any risque stories. There was that about 
him which made men careless in such matters as careful 
of their speech as they would be in the presence of a group 
of little girls. He was thoroughly religious in the best 
sense of the term. 

Dean Lewis, of the Law School of the University 
of Pennsylvania, who was very close to him during 
his latter years and the author of one of the best 
lives of Mr. Roosevelt, wrote me : 

To me, Colonel Roosevelt was a Christian because he 
was throughout his life a follower of Christ's teachings and 
because he believed intensely in the best Christian ideals 
of family and personal responsibility. 

William R. Thayer, another author of a "life" 
and a classmate in Harvard, answered my inquiry: 

I do not know exactly how you define a Christian. If 
you mean one who practiced the fundamental virtues, ex- 
pressed by the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount, 
I should say emphatically "Yes." 

There were only a few churches in Oyster Bay, 
but Mr. Roosevelt was always the friend of all the 



234 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

pastors there. Two Methodist preachers came to 
know him well enough to testify very positively. One, 
the Rev. Charles R. Woodson, declared that 

the people of Oyster Bay held Theodore Roosevelt in the 
highest esteem for his exemplified Christian character and 
neighborly spirit. He proved to them his faith by his 
works. 

And the Rev. W. I. Bowman affirmed : 

When I think of Mr. Roosevelt's crystal faith, his ac- 
curate and masterly knowledge of the Bible, his deep rever- 
ence for holy things, his solemn discharge of religious 
duties, his fervent regard for the good and true, and his 
profound contempt for, and loathing of, the counterfeit, I 
feel my utter inability to do justice even in the remotest 
degree in describing his "faith." 

My acquaintance with Mr. Roosevelt is of nineteen years 
standing, during nine of which I was in close fellowship 
with him. I have never known a truer exponent of the 
vital principles of Christianity than Theodore Roosevelt. 

Mr. Roosevelt once said concerning Lyman Abbott, 
"I have a peculiar feeling for your father" (spoken 
to Lawrence Abbott). 

I therefore sought an interview with Dr. Abbott, 
a saintly man past eighty-five, with a brain as alert 
and bright as ever, and he gave me the following 
carefully phrased statement: 

It is safe to say that religion was the key to his 
whole life and the explanation of his ideals and success. 
That, however, need not include any special theological 
form. He was very slow to give expression to any religious 
experience. He was always reticent about that. But there 
is no doubt in my own mind of his faith in God. But he 




Harris & Ewiiitr 

GRACE REFORMED CHURCH, 15th STREET, N. W., 
NEAR RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Mr. Roosevelt's church home for seven years (the insert is the 

original chapel which he first attended, and which stands 

on the back of this lot). 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 235 

would not define the term "God." I personally cannot see 
a medium of getting a conception of God through nature, 
but we must get it through personality. If Jesus Christ is 
not the supremest manifestation of God, if he does not 
answer who or what God is, then we have no answer at all. 
I do not know Mr. Roosevelt's doctrine of Christ. I can 
simply say that he demanded the concrete as I do and cer- 
tainly personified God. He did not endeavor to explain the 
godward side of Jesus but was attracted to and imitated 
his manward side of service. Each must serve God ac- 
cording to his own temperament. Mr. Roosevelt was a 
man of very deep spiritual nature— that is shown by his 
deeds, not his professions. It would be hard to fix him 
according to any specific creed because that is a classifica- 
tion of religious experience. He, however, had definite be- 
liefs. He quoted Micah 6. 8 very much as his ideal. Ac- 
cording to that test, he was a Christian. "To do justice"— 
no man in our history has done more to put righteousness 
and justice into our life. That also fits Paul's definition of 
the kingdom of God. "Righteousness and peace," etc. "To 
love mercy" — a story will illustrate that. 

Our weekly staff luncheon was to occur at the National 
Arts Club and two ambassadors from South American 
countries and other distinguished guests were invited. 
When we arrived Mr. Roosevelt found a little lad who could 
not talk English, and who was crying bitterly because lost. 
His father, a Hungarian miner, and his mother were to 
take a boat home the next day and he wandered out of the 
hotel and didn't know its name or location. Mr. Roosevelt 
took the boy's hand, quieted him, got his confidence so he 
was willing to go with him to the police station, where Mr. 
Roosevelt secured the cooperation of the police and found 
the parents. Thirty minutes later he showed up at the 
luncheon without any excuse. That was mercy. 

The Hon. Oscar S. Straus has been the only He- 

. brew who ever served in the Cabinet of the United 

States. He is a gentleman of high culture and a 



236 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

marked religious spirit, heartily devoted to the serv- 
ice of his fellows. He gave me an interesting inter- 
view. It is given here quite fully because it strongly 
emphasizes the fact that Mr. Roosevelt was drawn 
to spiritually minded men wherever they appear. 
Mr. Straus' record in Europe initiated the fellow- 
ship with Mr. Roosevelt. Among other things Mr. 
Straus said: 

My father, Lazarus Straus, who resided in Rhenish Ba- 
varia, took part in the German Revolution of 1848. When 
the Revolution, which was a struggle for constitutionalism, 
failed, like many others who took part therein, he came to 
America and in 1854 settled in Talbotton, Georgia, where 
my brothers and I, when we attained school age, attended 
the Baptist Sunday school. My father, being an educated 
man, was versed in the Bible, which he read in the original 
Hebrew. The circuit preachers of the various Protestant 
denominations frequently came to our home and discussed 
with him the Bible text. I was at times present at these 
conferences and derived from them much valuable in- 
struction. They served at this early age to give me a very 
sympathetic understanding of the real Christian spirit. 

I was a guest at the White House overnight at one time. 
The other guests were the venerable and learned Rev. Dr. 
Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, and his son Lawrence. 
Before breakfast we took a short walk in the White House 
grounds and the discussion drifted to some newspaper 
criticism which charged Mr. Roosevelt with prejudice. I 
listened to the discussion between Dr. Abbott and him, and 
he turned to me asking whether I thought he was actuated 
by prejudice. I replied then, which my subsequent in- 
timacy justifies me in emphasizing, that most public men 
I had met had religious prejudices, some of whom had suc- 
ceeded — and I mentioned Cleveland as an example — in over- 
coming them, but as to him, Roosevelt, I would say he had 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 237 

no occasion to overcome his prejudices, as I had observed 
he had no prejudices to overcome. 

In June, 1906, while I was at one of the many enjoyable 
luncheons at the White House, he asked me to wait while 
he went with the various guests into an adjoining room, 
and after he had dismissed them, he came and joined me 
and said that he had decided that he wanted me in his 
Cabinet as soon as a vacancy occurred, which would take 
place in a few months, when he had in mind the appoint- 
ment of Attorney-General Moody to the Supreme Court. 
"Straus, I want you in my Cabinet not because you are a 
Jew, but I'm mighty glad you are one." To which I re- 
plied: "What you say is most gratifying to me, for if I 
thought that you decided to appoint me because I am a 
Jew, it would not have been agreeable to me, as I am 
primarily an American and my religion is incidental just 
as yours is, and subordinate to my Americanism." He re- 
plied, "I know that, and for that reason all the more it 
gives me pleasure to appoint you." 

You ask me to give my ideas about Roosevelt's religion. 
Roosevelt was a Christian in the same sense that George 
Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander 
Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln were Christians. His 
Christianity was in no sense ecclesiastical. It was spirit- 
ual, broad and benevolent. I never knew a man who ex- 
emplified more fully in word and in deed, in sentiment and 
in spirit, in private life and in public office, the injunction 
of the prophet, "To do justly, love mercy and walk hum- 
bly before God" than Roosevelt. In fact, he frequently 
quoted this passage of Scripture. 

Mr. H. L. Stoddard answered the question, "How 
do you know Mr. Roosevelt had faith in God?" for 
me as follows : 

There is a very complete answer in recalling his favorite 



238 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

hymn, which was the only one sung at his funeral. A 
favorite song is a window into the soul. It was: 

"How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word! 
What more can he say than to you he hath said. 
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?" 

I always considered Mr. Roosevelt a very devout man. He 
thought about religion and the Bible much more than he 
talked about it. His religion fed the roots of the things 
he did, and he believed that his deeds were the strongest 
kind of profession. 

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler in talking with me 
said that Mr. Roosevelt was a ''professing Chris- 
tian though not a theologian. He did not have a 
mind for philosophic argument. Results established 
facts for him.'' For example: 

He was never interested in the discussion concerning the 
divinity of Jesus; he never had any occasion for doubting 
it. To him Jesus was a very real person. Moral courage is 
absolutely impossible without character, and he had an 
abundance of the former. He would never have wasted 
time going to church if it had been to him an empty form. 

A few of Gifford Pinchot's statements as he talked 
the subject over with me were : 

Mr. Roosevelt had some things he kept in an inner 
citadel; no one was allowed to drag them out. One was 
religion. The things he cared for the most deeply he was 
reticent about; for example, he did not praise or boast about 
his children. Religion touched him deeply, and, as with all 
things that did that, about it he talked little. How would 
I know he had faith in God? By his familiarity with the 
Bible, his ability to sense evil in men, and quickly and 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 239 

almost unerringly separate the true from the false. He 
went to church as a public testimony to the fact that he 
was a Christian. 

W. Emlen Roosevelt, his cousin and associate 
from boyhood, never even thought of "doubting his 
faith in God" : 

It was such a vital part of his being. Even as young 
men, when we would lie about in the woods resting during 
our hunting trips, he would talk about God and related 
subjects in a perfectly natural way. 

While Mr. Roosevelt was considerate of all forms 
of faith, he had no patience with the atheist — one 
who was so wise and egotistical as to dogmatically 
declare that there is no God. He once called Tom 
Paine that "dirty little atheist." That aroused 
someone to write him denying that Mr. Paine 
was an atheist. He explained in a letter to a 
friend that his reference was primarily to the 
physical condition of Mr. Paine, but Mr. Bishop 
assured me that while it furnished the immedi- 
ate occasion for him to apply the term, yet never- 
theless in the letter he also expressed his con- 
tempt for atheists in general. The epistle was di- 
rected to "Dear Dan" and in it he admitted that 
though Tom Paine was not a literal atheist, yet while 
acknowledging the existence of an unknown God, he 
nevertheless denied a belief in the God of the Chris- 
tians. He then affirmed, however, that anyone who 
had lain several weeks in bed without getting out 
for any purpose whatsoever must literally be dirty. 

Major George Haven Putnam told me that Mr. 



240 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Roosevelt was such a "profound theist that he was 
intolerant toward all atheists, and that explains his 
attack on Paine, whom he thought to be an atheist." 
Mr. Bishop said to me: 

From my long and intimate acquaintance with him and 
as the literary executor of his writings, I am sure that he 
had a thorough contempt for an atheist. He settled every 
question of life upon faith in God. 

Mr. Leary said to the writer : 

A New England Catholic official frankly explained that 
in America, where One Supreme Being was recognized, there 
was not the occasion for the church to interest itself in 
affairs of state as in many European countries. Mr. Roose- 
velt commented favorably on this statement, and after re- 
ferring to the fact that the "Grand Lodge of the Orient" 
[the Masons] was an outlaw with other Masons because it 
did not believe in God he said, "That same atheism among 
the leaders is largely responsible for many troubles in 
[naming a certain European country]. It is a sinister in- 
fluence. The people themselves are religious, and that fact 
probably saves the nation." And in speaking of "my re- 
ligion, my faith" as being included in Micah 6. 8, Mr. 
Roosevelt concluded, "I am always sorry for the faithless 
man just as I am sorry for the woman without virtue." 

Lawrence Abbott in answering my question illus- 
trated the Christian spirit of Mr. Roosevelt by re- 
ferring to a letter he wrote to Mr. Abbott when he 
agreed to join the Outlook staff : 

I have no right to formulate Theodore Roosevelt's re- 
ligious beliefs or views; he never formulated them to me 
nor authorized me to speak for him. My impression, how- 
ever, may perhaps be stated in this way: 



A CHKISTIAN? OTHEKS' TESTIMONY 241 

He believed in the universe, in a Great Power behind the 
universe, that Power which Matthew Arnold calls the 
Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness. He per- 
sonified this Power but he did not define it. He did not 
believe in a mechanical, rationalistic universe that operates 
through blind force. 

He believed that the human race has been placed on this 
planet in this great and terrifying universe for a definite 
purpose, and his interest was to do what he could to fur- 
ther that purpose. For this reason he wanted to associate 
himself with men and women of spiritual vision and un- 
derstanding no matter to what church they belonged. He 
was interested in the spirit of religion rather than in its 
form. I think his creed could be briefly written by combin- 
ing the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of Micah with 
the thirty-ninth verse of the twenty-second chapter of Saint 
Matthew. I think that he believed that the spirit of Jesus 
is the finest and divinest spirit that any man ever knew 
anything about, but I do not think that he was interested 
in metaphysical or dogmatic arguments about it. He be- 
lieved in the divine in man, in art, in history; he was a 
regular attendant at church, not, in my judgment, because 
of the doctrines of the church, but because it was his con- 
viction that the church — and I use the word in its very 
broadest sense — furnishes the greatest, the most compre- 
hensive and the most effective association of men and 
women who hold this spiritual and divine view of the uni- 
verse and who wanted to work together for its furtherance. 
This "spirit" in Roosevelt is expressed in a letter which 
he wrote to me in the spring of 1917 about my father. The 
passage runs as follows: 

"It was your father who was the decisive factor in 
getting me to accept. I might have accepted your request 
alone; but I have a peculiar feeling for your father. I re- 
gard him and have long regarded him as a man who in a 
way stands entirely apart from all others in our national 
life; and if the expression does not seem exaggerated, my 
regard for him has in it a little of that feeling of reverence 



242 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

which is perhaps the finest feeling an old man can inspire 
in younger men — even when these younger men, like my- 
self, become old men!" 

The prophet Micah and Jesus of Nazareth declared that 
a sense of justice, a life of neighborliness, and a spirit of 
reverence are the three foundation stones of true religion; 
judged by their standards, Theodore Roosevelt was a pro- 
foundly religious man. 

In speaking of Mr. Roosevelt's religion, some spin 
fine sentences about righteousness and justice and 
fairness and lo^^alty as though they had a separate 
entity. But that is a mistake. As Mr. Eugene H. 
Thwing says in closing his study of Roosevelt's life : 

No man can possibly stand for truth and righteousness 
or employ their power unless he is in direct relationship 
with the Divine Source. The wireless connection must be 
established with God at one end and man at the other. Then 
the man can exclaim boldly and truly with Paul: "I can 
do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." 
Does this sound too much like a sermon? Tell me, if you 
can, how to approach the mighty theme of truth and right- 
eousness with God left out. 

The whole world always thought of him as "preach- 
ing and practicing moral truths dear alone to a 
Christian." Even when an English university gave 
him a degree the students greeted him with a dog- 
gerel : 

"But his^ prowess in the jungle is as nothing to his fame 
In the copy-books cum Sunday Chapel Missionary 
game." 

Then after decrying their sins before the "moral 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 243 

Theodore," they express their appreciation of the 
"pretty decent things he has done" and end play- 
fully with: 

"So when you come to speak to us, in Providence's name 
Give the go-by to the Sunday Chapel Missionary game." 

When he did finally speak he begged their pardon for 
disobeying their exhortation and proceeded to 
preach. 

I asked Mr. Bishop, "Why did Mr. Roosevelt say 
so little about personal religion and his own views?" 

It was not like Mr. Roosevelt to talk about religion. He 
took it for granted that his talks on morals and his life and 
actions would witness sufficiently, just as his vigorous exer- 
cises told of his health. To talk about it seemed to him 
to be trying to make something apparent that ought to be 
apparent of itself. 

Mr. Leary describes a Sunday when dry pleurisy 
held Mr. Roosevelt at home, and being told that the 
boys were surprised that he had missed church, he 
"preached" about his religion and ended it with: 

Well, I have been talking religion. It's something I do 
very seldom. After all, one's religion is a private thing, 
and one is apt to be misunderstood. So, if I should say 
publicly what I said here to-day, some half-baked preacher 
would attack me to-morrow for indorsing the Pope, another 
because I am a Mohammedan at heart, and another would 
see in my tolerance for the rabbi proof that my right name 
is Rosenfelt or Rosenthal.i 

Mr. Roosevelt always depended upon the "right- 

^Leary. Talka With T. R., p. 68. By permission of Houghton MiflBin Com- 
pany. 



244 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

iiess" of a message or an action to carry it through 
— he did not want either it or himself to win because 
it was dressed up and for that reason alone secure 
a following. He believed that ''goodness" ought to 
win by virtue of its innate claim on man and felt, 
therefore, that a cause approved by "goodness" 
would ultimately win if it were made clear to the 
people. A good many men have been elected because 
sponsored for by church membership, and sometimes 
that has led people to expect too much from an in- 
dividual or it has caused them to shift the burden 
too far from the individual's shoulders and so hold 
the church as such responsible. When Mr. Roosevelt 
entered politics lawyers frequently quoted the Scrip- 
tures to enforce their messages or even to appeal in 
an unjust case to the religious instincts of a jury. 
Politicians went so far as to join the church to get 
votes. Artificial reformers thus wore hypocritical 
garbs as they rode into office and openly disgraced 
the church. At the same time when church members 
failed it was supposed to prove the spuriousness of 
their faith because common opinion very carelessly 
accredited church membership as a claim to superior 
holiness when it should have been accepted, as now, 
merely as the enrollment of a student in the school 
of Christ to learn goodness. Mr. Loeb, agreeing with 
the above putting of the case, went on to say : 

Mr. Roosevelt did not want to have any artificial aid — 
he wanted his character and his measures to carry him 
through, and hence after he entered politics vigorously he 
refused also to take any further Masonic degrees, fearing 
that it would be interpreted as a bid for backing. 



A CHRISTIAN? OTHERS' TESTIMONY 245 

Mr. Washburne, an earnest churchman and one 
of the eight students who for four years fellowshiped 
with Mr. Roosevelt in his private Harvard boarding 
club and afterward a Congressman, in a personal 
letter says, "I never heard him discuss strictly re- 
ligious topics. You know 'The shallows murmur 
but the deeps are dumb.' " 

This chapter could not be closed better than by a 
statement prepared by Herman Hagedorn as a 
memorial resolution on Roosevelt's death for the 
National Council of Boy Scouts. It is fine evidence 
that he was a Christian : 

He was found faithful over a few things and he was made 
ruler over many; he cut his own trail clean and straight, 
and millions followed him toward the light. 

He was frail; he made himself a tower of strength. He 
was timid; he made himself a lion of courage. He was a 
dreamer; he became one of the great doers of all time. 

Men put their trust in him, women found a champion in 
him, kings stood in awe of him, but children made him 
their playmate. 

He broke a nation's slumber with his cry, and it rose up. 
He touched the eyes of blind men with a flame and gave 
them vision. Souls became swords through him, swords 
became servants of God. 

He was loyal to his country, and he exacted loyalty; 
he loved many lands, but he loved his own land best. 

He was terrible in battle, but tender to the weak; joyous 
and tireless, being free of self-pity, clean with a cleanness 
that cleansed the air like a gale. 

His courtesy knew no wealth or class; his friendship no 
creed or color or race. His courage stood every onslaught 
of savage beast and ruthless man, of loneliness, of victory, 
of defeat. 

His mind was eager, his heart was true, his body 



246 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

and spirit defiant of obstacles, ready to meet what might 
come. 

He fought injustice and tyranny, bore sorrow gallantly; 
loved all nature, bleak spaces and hardy companions, 
hazardous adventure, and the zest of battle. Wherever he 
went he carried his own pack; and in the uttermost parts 
of the earth he kept his conscience for his guide. 



CHAPTER XII 

WAS HE A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN 
TESTIMONY 

"The true Christian is the true citizen, lofty of purpose, 
resolute in endeavor or ready for a hero's deeds, but never 
looking down on his task because it is cast in the day of 
small things." 

Ye shall know them by their fruits. — Matt. 7. 16. 

A MERE set of cold creedal tests cannot prove 
one a Christian. But there are distinctive 
^'marks." ^'Profession" does not make one a 
Christian, though it may help one to more com- 
pletely develop the traits of a Christian. Only the 
shirker remains out of the church in order that he 
may not be as sternly judged by the world as if a 
member. If we believe we are God's sons, then we 
ought to act like it whether an open member of the 
church or not. No man is relieved from ''duty," nor 
can one defend a lower standard of living simply 
because not "in the church." A sincere man may 
be a heretic and still be a Christian, though he will 
suffer from his erroneous "doctrines" and actions as 
will an orange tree when wrongly cultured or a 
wheat field ignorantly handled. A right belief helps 
get larger fruitage. To study Mr. Roosevelt is to be 
convinced that he was very nearly right because he 
bore so many fruits of the Spirit. Let us look at the 

247 



248 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"marks" that prove Mr. Roosevelt to be a Christian. 
These traits or "marks" will be presented in cate- 
gorical statements preceding corroborative evidence. 

He was innately and constantly reverent, 

Newspaper men are prone to joke about everything, 
including religion, but Mr. Roosevelt carried such 
an air of reverence that they never treated that sub- 
ject lightly in his presence. "He set them a good 
example," said Mr. Thompson. "While he turned 
jokes, for example, on every other phase of Mr. 
Bryan's life, he avoided doing what others did, 
namely, turn jokes about his religion. He never prac- 
ticed or encouraged criticism of anyone's religious 
views ; that was, to him, a sacred matter. While he 
never said a corrective word, the newspaper boys ad- 
mit that they were influenced unconsciously by his 
character and ^faith.' They cleansed their lan- 
guage, walked circumspectly, and hid from him their 
evil and despicable deeds, if they had any." 

President Roosevelt was much criticized because 
he tried to take from the coins the words "In God 
we trust." 

In a letter to a protesting clergyman he expressed 
the conviction that to put such a motto on coins 
worked no benefit, but positive injury, since it aug- 
mented an irreverence which w^s likely to lead to 
sacrilege. He felt that such a rich and dignified 
sentence "should be treated and uttered only with 
that fine reverence which necessarily implies a cer- 
tain exaltation of spirit." 

He agrees that the phrase should be inscribed on 
public buildings and monuments where it will carry 




Harris & E«incr 

GRACE REFORMED CHURCH 
(INTERIOR VIEWS). 
Above— The Communion Altar before which Mr. 
Roosevelt regularly took the sacred elements while 
in Washington. (He presented the two Bishops 
chairs to the church.) 

Below— The pew occupied bv President Roosevelt 
in the Washington Church. (The "Behr" window 
is on the left.) 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 249 

the message of reverence. He affirms that since the 
phrase is used on commonly handled coins it becomes 
an object of jest and ridicule in word and cartoon, 
as, for example, "In 'gold' we trust." He concludes 
his defense by saying that he will restore the motto 
if Congress orders, but, "I earnestly trust that the 
religious sentiment of the country, the spirit of 
reverence . . . will prevent it." 

Mr. Hagedorn tells us that Mr. Roosevelt as a boy 
was "bright mentally but not brilliant," with a good 
memory, and clung to reading. "He had lofty im- 
pulses and the best of intentions ; he was naturally 
religious ; he was singularly pure-minded." 

He teas spiritually minded. 

In an early speech as Vice-President with the new 
world problems brought by the Spanish War facing 
the nation, he insisted : "We tread the rough road 
of endeavor, smiting down the wrong and battling 
for the right as Greatheart smote and battled in 
Bunyan's immortal story." 

This is a sympathetic appreciation of a deeply 
spiritual author and reveals admiration for one of 
his purest characters. 

He pleads for sensitiveness of "soul" when he de- 
livers his Pacific Theological Seminary Lectures. 

It has been finely said that the supreme task of humanity 
is to subordinate the whole fabric of civilization to the 
service of the soul There is a soul in the community, a 
soul in the nation, just exactly as there is a soul in the in- 
dividual, and exactly as the individual hopelessly mars 
himself if he lets his conscience be dulled by constant 
repetition of unworthy acts, so the nation will hopelessly 
blunt the popular conscience if it permits its public men 



250 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

continually to do acts which the nation in its heart of 
hearts knows are acts that cast discredit upon our whole 
public life. 

And in speaking on ^'Ideals of Citizenship," he 
said: "But after that certain amount of material 
prosperity has been gained, then the things that 
really count most are the things of the soul rather 
than the things of money." And in his lecture on 
"Applied Ethics," delivered at Harvard, he said: 
"The abler a man is the worse he is from the public 
standpoint if his ability is not guided by conscience" 
(p. 22). 

After his vigorous campaign and election in 1904, 
in which he battled against the selfish money power 
of the nation, he feared that materialism would 
smother the soul of America, and so he writes Mis- 
tral, the French poet of Provence, and the letter was 
reproduced in The Outlook, October 27, 1920 : 

My dear Mr. Mistral: 

Mrs. Roosevelt and I were equally pleased with the book 
and the medal, and none the less because for nearly twenty 
years we have possessed a copy of Mireio. That copy we 
shall keep for old association's sake; though this new copy 
with the personal inscription by you must hereafter occupy 
the place of honor. 

All success to you and your associates! You are teaching 
the lesson that none need more to learn than we of the 
West, we of the eager, restless, wealth-seeking nation; the 
lesson that after a certain not very high level of material 
well-being has been reached, then the things that really 
count in life are the things of the spirit. Factories and 
railways are good up to a certain point; love of home and 
country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 251 

man's work and in nature, love and emulation of daring 
and of lofty endeavor, the homely workaday virtues and 
the heroic virtues — these are better still, and if they are 
lacking, no piled-up riches, no rearing, clanging industrial- 
ism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall avail either 
the Individual or the nation. I do not undervalue these 
things of a nation's body; I only desire that they shall not 
make us forget that beside the nation's body there is also 
the nation's soul. 

Mrs. Robinson felt that this letter was "one of the 
most beautiful utterances of his life." Mistral said 
on receiving the letter, "It is he who has given new 
hope to humanity." 

Mr. Van Valkenburg said in an editorial that Mr. 
Roosevelt "was a man of deep religious feeling." He 
went to church as the musically inclined go to con- 
certs and the naturalists to the woods. He found 
something there for which this "feeling" yearned. 

Dr. Lambert said to me: 

He was a man of great spiritual insight and development. 
His fights for the right were but the expression of his 
spiritual beliefs — such outward expressions required a great 
spirit to explain them. 

Mr. Van Valkenburg after recounting a visit in 
the hospital when he was in great pain and refused 
to notice it, explained to me : 

He compelled his body to obey him, so that without ces- 
sation because of pain or anything else he accomplished a 
wonderful amount of work. His great spirit dulled the cut 
of pain; it could not disturb him or check his activities. 
Such a conquering spirit gets its strength from but one 
source — faith in God. 



252 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Mr. Leary says that after "the hurt received at 
Chicago" Mr. Roosevelt talked with him for the first 
and only time about religion and says : "During this 
talk I could not down the feeling that like many an- 
other, wounded in spirit, he was consciously or un- 
consciously turning to religion for comfort." ^ 

In 1911 he delivered the "William Belden Noble" 
lecture at Harvard, under the title, "Applied Ethics." 
The deed of gift endowing the course says : "The ob- 
ject of the lectures is to continue the mission of Wil- 
liam Belden Noble, whose supreme desire it was to 
extend the influence of Jesus as the way, the truth, 
and the life." 

The preceding lectures had been "The Ethics of 
Jesus" by the Rev. Henry C. King, D.D., president 
of Oberlin, and "Christ and the Human Race," by 
the Rev. Charles C. Hall, D.D., president of Union 
Theological Seminary. W^ould Mr. Roosevelt have 
entered this definite religious field if not sympa- 
thetically attuned to it ? 

He put great emphasis on character^ as something 
beyond mere intellectual attainments. Major Put- 
nam says that he "was always honest himself because 
he drew on his character to decide what was right. 
This was the source of his moral wisdom as his 
brain was for intellectual acumen." 

In an address at Sao Paulo, Brazil, October 27, 
1913, on "Character and Civilization," he defines 
character and its positive elements. 

By character I mean the sum of those qualities distinct 



iLeary, Tcdka With T. R., p. 68. By permission of Houghton Mifl3in 
Company. 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 253 

from purely intellectual qualities which are essential to 
moral efficiency. 

Exactly as strength comes before beauty, so character 
must ever stand above intellect, above genius. 

Honesty, rigid honesty, is a root virtue; and if not pres- 
ent, no other virtue can atone for its lack. But we cannot 
afford to be satisfied with the negative virtue of not being 
corrupt. We need the virile positive virtues. 

In his lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris, he de- 
clared: ''There is need of a sound body, and even 
more of a sound mind. But above mind and above 
body stands character." And at the University of 
Berlin, he reminded them : 

Yet the Greek civilization itself fell because this many- 
sided development became too exclusively one of intellect, 
at the expense of character, at the expense of the funda- 
mental qualities which fit men to govern both themselves 
and others {European and African Addresses, p. 133). 

At Harvard in his lecture on "Applied Ethics" he 

said: 

No man has gained what ought to be gained from his 
college career unless he comes out of college with a finer 
and higher sense of his obligations and duties as well as 
with a trained capacity to do them well. 

This seems to answer the group who have been 
telling us that culture will save the world. In these 
three great and diverse universities Mr. Roosevelt 
denied the sufficiency of mental training. Character 
is so subtle that it will no more grow sturdily with- 
out light from God's face than oaks will without 
sunshine. 



254 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He seemed to identify the traits as included in 
a Christian life when he described the requisites for 
a virile worker in this world by saying, "that kind 
of work can be done only by the man who is neither 
a weakling nor a coward, by the man who in the 
fullest sense of the word is a true Christian." 

Mr. Roosevelt had a distinct and clear-cut creed. 
He did not express it in separated and classified 
statements; most of it was in deeds. By studying 
both we may at least get some of its elements. Dr. 
Lyman Abbott well said, "A creed should contain 
not what we must believe but, rather, what we do 
believe.-' 

Only the short-sighted and shallow set themselves 
off in a supposedly independent way by asserting 
that they do not believe in, and have no, creed. It 
was a "creed" that brought the Pilgrim forefathers 
to America and sustained them through experiences 
which would otherwise have exterminated them. The 
Declaration of Independence was a Christian creed, 
as were Lincoln's affirmations that saved the Union. 
And Theodore Roosevelt believed in and enunciated 
a creed and fought for it till death. Let us search 
for some elements of it. 

In The Outlook (December 2, 1911) Mr. Roosevelt 
commends Alfred Henry Russell for taking the 
position in his book The World of Life along with 
"the younger present-day scientific investigators," 
which shows his readiness to acknowledge "that the 
materialistic and mechanical explanations of the 
causes of evolution have broken down and that 
science itself furnishes an overwhelming argument 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 255 

for 'creative power, directive mind, and ultimate 
purpose' in the process of evolution." 

That test can only be met by a "personal" God in 
whom he evidently believed. 

William Allen White wrote me: "Many times 
Roosevelt has expressed to me his faith in the moral 
government of the universe and in the personality of 
that government called God." 

In the above quoted Outlook article he seems to 
clinch the accepted view of God when in referring to 
the dogmatic iconoclasm of the materialistic scien- 
tists he says : 

How foolish we should be to abandon our adherence to 
the old ideals of duty toward God and man without better 
security than the more radical among the new prophets 
can offer us! 

He was greatly offended when anyone dared to 
classify the Christian as on the same footing as the 
other religions of the world, for he considered it as 
the only true religion. And so in reviewing Kidd's 
Social Evolution he objects that "Mr. Kidd's group- 
ing of all religions together is offensive to every 
earnest believer." Continuing, he says: 

Throughout his book he treats all religious beliefs from 
the same standpoint, as if they were all substantially simi- 
lar and substantially of the same value; whereas it is, of 
course, a mere truism to say that most of them are mutually 
destructive. Not only has he no idea of differentiating the 
true from the false, but he seems not to understand that 
the truth of a particular belief is of any moment. 

And further along Mr. Roosevelt says : 



256 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

It hardly seems necessary to point out that this cannot 
be the fact. If the God of the Christians be in very truth 
the one God, and if the belief in him be established, as 
Christians believe it will, then the foundation for the 
religious belief in Mumbo Jumbo can be neither broad, 
deep, nor lasting. 

In his Outlook article, "The Search for Truth in 
a Reverent Spirit" (Dec. 2, 1911), he said: 

When the doctrine of the gospel of works is taken to 
mean the gospel of service to mankind and not merely the 
performance of a barren ceremonial, it must command the 
respect and I hope the adherence of all devout men of every 
creed and even those who adhere to no creed of recognized 
orthodoxy. 

Continuing, he says : 

In the same way I heartily sympathize with his [Thomas 
Dwight, M.D.] condemnation of the men who stridently 
proclaim that "science has disposed of religion" and . . . 
who would try to teach the community that there is no 
real meaning to the words "right" and "wrong," and who 
therefore deny free will and accountability. 

Again he describes factors in it when he says : 
"Whatever form of creed we profess, we make the 
doing of duty and the love of our fellow men two of 
the prime articles in our universal faith." 

He also speaks of the "dreary creed" of the ma- 
terial evolutionist, which gives no satisfaction to 
man's inner self. 

Many friends of Mr. Roosevelt called attention to 
the fact that he constantly referred to Micah 6. 8 as 
containing his creed. Mr. Leary quotes him as say- 
ing about it ; 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 257 

That is my religion, my faith. To me it sums up all re- 
ligion, it is all the creed I need. It seems simple and easy, 
but there is more in that verse than in the involved rituals 
and confessions of faith of many creeds we know. 

To love justice, to be merciful, to appreciate that the 
great mysteries shall not be known to us, and so living, 
face the beyond confident and without fear — that is life.^ 

Dr. Lambert said that he frequently included the 
seventh verse in his quotation and emphasized the 
futility of giving "the fruit of my body for the sin 
of my soul," and the Doctor added, "His creed was 
that of a man who was spiritually ahead of his 
times." 

Jacob A. Riis, his dearest friend, once wrote: 

Though he is at few public professions, yet is he a 
reverent man, of practice, in private and public, ever in 
accord with the highest ideals of Christian manliness. 
His is a militant faith, bound on the mission of helping 
the world ahead; and in that campaign he welcomes gladly 
whoever would help. For the man who is out merely to 
purchase for himself a seat in heaven, whatever befall his 
brother, he has nothing but contempt; for him who strug- 
gles painfully toward the light, a helping hand and word 
of cheer always. With forms of every kind he has a toler- 
ant patience — for what they mean. For the mere husk 
emptied of all meaning, he has little regard. 

He believed that doctrines affected actions and so 
he rejoiced that even in Cromwell's day a new form 
of doctrine appeared so that a formal agreement with 
a theological "dogma" was supplanted by the "now 
healthy general religious belief in the superior im- 
portance of conduct." 

iLeary, Talks with T. R. By penniasion of Houghton Mifflin Company. 



258 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Miss Josephine L. Baldwin, an expert worker, was 
asked at the close of a Sunday school institute which 
she had conducted at Oyster Bay if the people there 
could do her a favor to show their gratitude. An 
inspiration came and she told them that two or 
three years before she had selected a verse for a 
Junior Department motto and heard afterward that 
it was Mr. Roosevelt's favorite verse. She suggested 
that they secure his photograph with his signature 
and that verse written on it. In a few days it came, 
and is now framed in Saint Paul's Methodist Church, 
Newark. The verse was "Be ye doers of the word 
and not hearers only." Some years afterward Presi- 
dent Roosevelt was "receiving" the members of the 
Religious Education Association. Miss Baldwin de- 
cided to stop the line long enough to remind him 
of the picture and his signature and said to him, 
"That verse has been an inspiration to our boys and 
girls." His face lighted with real pleasure and he 
said, "I am very glad indeed to hear it." 

He wrote a challenge to America in 1916 under 
the title, "Fear God and Take Your Own Part," 
which contains a complete and exacting creed. In 
it he said : 

Fear God and take your own part. Fear God, in the 
true sense of the word, means love God, respect God, honor 
God, and all of this can only be done by loving our neigh- 
bor, treating him justly and mercifully and in all ways en- 
deavoring to protect him from injustice and cruelty, thus 
obeying, as far as our human frailty will permit, the great 
and immutable law of righteousness. ... We must apply 
this same standard of conduct alike to man and to woman, 
to rich man and to poor man, to employer and employee. 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 259 

Some time before his death Mr. Riis told the writer 
that Mr. Roosevelt believed in the unique divinity of 
Jesus and in all the fundamental doctrines of the 
church. 

While it is probable that he never discussed nor 
sought to understand the mystery of Christ's di- 
vinity, yet there is no evidence that he denied it and 
much to conclude that he accepted it. He had a pro- 
found and unquestioning reverence for and confi- 
dence in Christ's life and teaching. 

Sir Robert Perks, a distinguished British layman, 
once called upon President Roosevelt and with great 
courtesy informed him that he came as the repre- 
sentative of four million Methodists in Great Britain, 
Ireland, India, Africa, and the Isles of the Sea. 
The President after welcoming him as the repre- 
sentative of ^'the great church which sent you'' and 
the ^'homeland" (England), concluded: 

And I want to say that neither your country nor mine 
can be powerful, permanent, and progressive, unless it 
build upon the elements of the teaching of Jesus Christ; 
that teaching that is independent of political distinctions or 
theological controversy (The Christian Advocate, New 
York). 

Mr. Roosevelt in his writings traces the courage 
and capability of Daniel Boone, one of his rare he- 
roes, well deserving of high place and constant praise, 
to his sturdy Christian creed : 

Boone's creed in matters of morality and religion was 
as simple and straightforward as his own character. Late 
in life he wrote to one of his kinsfolk: "All the religion I 



260 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

have is to love and fear God, believe in Jesus Christ, do all 
the good to my neighbors and myself that I can, and do 
as little harm as I can help, and trust on God's mercy for 
the rest." The old pioneer always kept the respect of red 
man and white, of friend and foe, for he acted according 
to his belief (Winning of the West, p. 151). 

There is here no question concerning the personality 
of God or the divinity of Christ. 

He had a very clear conception of some important 
qualities in a Christian. He warned against a cal- 
lous and apathetic moral nature : 

It is a very bad thing to be morally callous, for moral 
callousness is a disease. . . . The religious man who is use- 
ful is not he whose sole care is to save his soul, but the 
man whose religion bids him strive to advance decency and 
clean living and to make the world a better place for his 
fellows to live in {Theodore Roosevelt as an Undergradu- 
ate, Wilhelm, p. 88). 

In his review of Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution 
he displays an unusual knowledge of the Bible and of 
Christian doctrine. In that he clearly and rightly 
condemns the so-called Christian who isolates his 
life instead of making it a leaven to work uplift 
among the people: 

All religions, and all forms of religion, in which the 
principle of asceticism receives any marked development, 
are positively antagonistic to the development of the social 
organism (American Ideals, p. 320f.). 

He emphasizes the fact that asceticism destroys 
sane and healthy religion: 
The same is equally true of many of the more ascetic 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 261 

developments of Christianity and Islam. There is strong 
probability that there was a Celtic population in Iceland 
before the arrival of the Norsemen, but these Celts be- 
longed to the Culdee sect of Christians. They were an- 
chorites and professed a creed which completely subor- 
dinated the development of the race on this earth to the 
well-being of the individual in the next. In consequence 
they died out and left no successors. 

In discussing the ability a people may possess for 
self-government he insisted that it was not a "God- 
given, natural right" but that it only came through 
the "slow growth of centuries," and then only to 
races "which possess an immense reserve fund of 
strength, common sense, and morality/' 

In an address before the Y. M. C. A. the night be- 
fore he retired as Governor he described very mi- 
nutely and reliably the traits of a "Christian" : 

The true Christian is the true citizen, lofty of purpose, 
resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero's deeds, but never 
looking down on his task because it is cast in the day of 
small things; scornful of baseness, awake to his own duties 
as well as to his rights, following the higher law with 
reverence, and in this world doing all that in him lies, so 
that when death comes he may feel that mankind Is in 
some degree better because he has lived. 

In an address March 16, 1910, to the American 
Mission at Khartum, which is under the auspices of 
the United Presbyterian Church, he urged the na- 
tive and other Christians to exemplify their doc- 
trines in everyday living in a notable way : 

Let it be a matter of pride with the Christian in the army 
that in time of danger no man is nearer that danger than 



262 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

he is. Let it be a matter of pride to the officer whose duty 
it is to fight that no man, when the country calls on him 
to fight, fights better than he does. Let the man in a civil 
governmental position so bear himself that it shall be ac- 
ceptable as axiomatic that when you have a Christian, a 
graduate of the missionary school in public office, the ef- 
ficiency and honesty of that office are guaranteed. 

The kind of graduate of a Christian school really worth 
calling a Christian is the man who shows his creed prac- 
tically by the way he behaves toward his wife and toward 
his children, toward his neighbor, toward those with whom 
he deals in the business world, and toward the city and 
government (European and African Addresses, p. 7). 

While President (September 8, 1906) he delivered 
an address at the Episcopal church in Oyster Bay, 
where he attended regularly. He exhorted his fellow 
Christians to exhibit a helpful home life, an upright 
business career, and a worthy stewardship in the 
use of wealth. 

The man is not a good Christian if his domestic conduct 
is such that when he returns to his home, his wife and his 
children feel a sense of uneasiness at his having come. 
The man is not a good Christian who in his business deal- 
ings fails to remember that it is incumbent upon him to 
hold a higher standard than his fellows, that it is incumbent 
upon him, if he is a very rich man, to make it evident alike 
in the way he earns and the way he spends his fortune, 
that the word of the Lord is to him a living truth and not 
a dead doctrine. And, of course, what I say applies even 
more strongly to the man in public life. 

He then urges both minister and people, including 
himself as a Christian, to embody the truths learned 
from the Bible and church fellowship : 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 263 

Each of us, layman and clergyman alike, must strive in 
our actual conduct day by day with the people among whom 
we live, to make them understand that what we expect 
from Christian folk, if they are sincere in their devotion 
to Christianity, is the highest standard of conduct, is the 
actual carrying out in practical life of what they profess 
to receive in church from the Bible and from their asso- 
ciations with their fellow members of whatever creed. 

He Relieved in a God-ordered world. 

He uncovered his religious life more before the 
practiced eyes of Lyman Abbott than before any 
other man. Dr. Abbott wrote me : 

Of his attitude toward God I cannot speak from any words 
he ever said to me on that subject, but he always produced 
the impression by his spirit that his faith in himself was 
founded on his faith that he was an instrument of a higher 
Power and was carrying out in his life his part of a 
greater plan than his own. 

Mr. Stoddard affirmed the correctness of this im- 
pression : 

Mr. Roosevelt had a keen sense of a God-ordered life. 
When he had a deep and fixed conviction he and no one 
else around him questioned its source. His faith in God also 
gave him an assurance that right would ultimately con- 
quer. 

When President Roosevelt addressed the Method- 
ist General Conference on their visit to Washington 
he suggested that Luther's battle hymn, ^'Ein' Feste 
Burg," be sung. The delegates from Germany and 
others who spoke German came forward to form a 
chorus to sing it in that language. Mr. Roosevelt 



264 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

came down from the platform and sang the whole 
hymn with them in German and from memory. 
Think of such words as : 

"A mighty fortress is our God, 

A bulwark never failing. 
Our helper he amid the flood 

Of mortal ills prevailing; 
For still our ancient foe 
Doth seek to work us woe; 
His craft and power are great 
And, armed with cruel hate, 

On earth is not his equal." 



And 



And 



'Did we in our own strength confide, 
Our striving would be losing." 



"We will not fear, for God hath willed 
His truth to triumph through us." 

Dr. Iglehart reported an interview with Mr. Roose- 
velt in The Christian Advocate as having occurred 
after the Great War. After recalling a previous 
statement that 'he believed ''God had called" him 
at that time "to fight the corruption of wealth and 
the evil customs in public offices," he concludes : 

But I thank him most for sparing me to take a part in 
the settlement of the great World War. No Hebrew prophet 
was ever called upon to cry out against the danger con- 
fronting his nation or the moral evils that cuf se the world 
more truly than I have been called upon to plead for an 
ideal Americanism. 

He had little sympathy with the "rationalistic" 



A CHKISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 265 

scientists who would destroy religion and the spirit- 
ual laws which have so splendidly brought the world 
forward. In The Outlook, in reviewing the Origin 
of and Evolution of Life, by H. F. Osborne (January 
16, 1918), he decries a destructive and ill-founded 
doctrine proposed by some evolutionists which is 

accepted by certain skeptical materialists as overthrow- 
ing spiritual laws with which they had no more to do than 
the discovery of steam power has to do with altruism. 
There are just as mischievous dogmatists among the twen- 
tieth-century scientists as ever there were among mediseval 
theologians. 

As an example of such dogmatism he says : 

A British scientist and Socialist blatantly insisted that 
habitual drunkenness in the father had no effect on the 
children. Immediately afterward experiments on guinea 
pigs showed that alcoholism in the parent induced physical 
degeneracy in the offspring. 

He reassured those who feared that science might 
injure religion. 

The claims of certain so-called scientific men as to science 
overthrowing religion are as baseless as the fears of cer- 
tain sincerely religious men on the same subject. 

He has no sympathy with the idler who assails re- 
ligion in a superior way as outgrown. He pointed 
out to the French at the Sorbonne, who at their best 
' gave scant attention to religion, the danger of being 
cynical : 

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, be- 
ware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself 



266 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

and to others as the cynic, as the man who has outgrown 
emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are 
as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a 
sneer (European and African Addresses, p. 37). 

He spoke almost as a prophet in Germany, then 
dominated by mechanical theology, while lecturing 
at the University of Berlin in emphasizing the 
world's need of religion : 

We can well do without the hard intolerance and arid 
intellectual barrenness of what was worst in the theological 
systems of the past, but there has never been greater need 
of a high and fine religious spirit than at the present time 
(European and African Addresses, p. 136). 

He urged continual progress toward better things, 
but he wanted also to guard against the discourage- 
ment of reaching full success when he said: ''Of 
course when I say 'realizable' I do not mean that 
we can completely realize any ideal. Something 
better is always ahead." 

He believed in seal for the right. Mrs. Robinson 
emphasized his enthusiastic obedience to duty : 

My brother never allowed anything to interfere with his 
religious duties. He always said, "Take all the joy near 
you but put duty first, and the outcome will be satisfac- 
tory." He believed in putting as much earnestness and 
enthusiasm into duty as into pleasure. 

At the Sorbonne he urged a sturdy righteousness : 
''The man who is saved by weakness from robust 
wickedness is likewise rendered immune from the 
robuster virtues. It takes ability and diligence to 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OAVN TESTIMONY 267 

be either a notably wicked or good man.'' In com- 
menting on the Chicago Convention he enforced the 
need of a stiff purpose : "A man who means well but 
who only means well feebly rarely stands the strain 
of serious temptation." He believed that goodness 
brought a man to higher efficiency. '^The man who 
carries Christianity into his everyday work stands 
a better chance of making a success of life than one 
who does not." He further enforced the added ef- 
ficiency which right-doing brought when he referred 
to his experiences as police commissioner, where he 
insisted that "efficiency" among the policemen in- 
creased with their "honesty." He explained that the 
conviction of criminals grew and the number of 
crimes where the criminal succeeded in escaping 
diminished. He was convinced that dishonesty al- 
ways clouded the brain and clogged native gifts. 
In a letter to Lawrence Abbott he says : 

Mr. Kennan quotes Tolstoy's words as proofs of re- 
pentance. Repentance must be shown by deeds, not words. 
One lapse is quite pardonable; but persistence in doing one 
thing while preaching another is not pardonable. It seems 
to me that Tolstoy is one of those men, by no means un- 
common, of perverted moral type who at bottom consider 
the luxury of frantic repentance — and the luxury of pro- 
fessing adherence to an impossible and undesirable ideal — 
as full atonement for and as really permitting, persistence 
in a line of conduct which gives the lie to their profes- 
sions {Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 190). 

Dr. Lambert told me about a time when Mr. Roose- 
velt asked him why he stirred up so much "antag- 
onism" : 



268 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Colonel Roosevelt spent two weeks at my camp in 1915 
and discussed many moral problems. One day he said, 
"Why is it that I arouse so much animosity?" I answered: 
"You always look upon sin as the product of a personal act 
of the sinner. You specialize until the guilty must recog- 
nize their own guilt, and that aggravates them. You be- 
lieve in smashing the sinner. Most preachers generalize, 
hoping someone will be hit. Your direct method gets re- 
sults but it is not popular." He thought a moment, then 
said, "I guess you are right." 

He always believed in possible reformation and 
gave every sincerely repentant man a chance to show 
that he was worthy of being trusted, as he did in the 
case of an ex-convict who served as a Rough Rider 
and of whom Mr. Roosevelt averred that he "had 
atoned for it (the criminal offense) by many years 
of fine performance of duty." President Roosevelt 
put him in a responsible official position where he 
rendered such excellent service that he testified 
there was no one who "as a citizen and as a friend 
I valued and respected" more. 

He always faced the consideration of death calmly. 

He would live so that loved survivors may "think 
well of us when we are gone" and get the pleasure of 
such thoughts. He admits that he cannot explain 
why he wants to feel that "one had lived manfully 
and honorably," yet he is sure such an ambition is 
an ennobling one. It will be gratifying "to know 
that on the whole one's duties have not been shirked, 
and there has been no flinching from foes, no lack ot 
gentleness and loyalty to friends," and that at least 
fair success has rewarded one's sincere efforts at his 
life task. 



ii 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 269 

In a letter to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes he discusses the satisfaction of coming 
to life's close with the consciousness of a well-spent 

life. 

In an Outlook article criticizing the dogmatic 
scientists he affirms a belief in the supernatural: 
"They also understand that outside of the purely 
physical lies the psychic, and that the realm of re- 
ligion stands outside even of the purely psychic." 

Mr. Koosevelt did not try to explain away that 
strange change depicted, as he says, in Begbie's 
Twice Born Men and constantly exhibited in the 
work of the Salvation Army. He recognizes what 
the Army, as well as other evangelical denomina- 
tions, call conversion as an incontrovertible fact. 
In an editorial in The Outlook (July, 1911) he 
wrote : 

No history of the twentieth century will be complete 
which does not deal with the work of the Salvation Army. 
One very interesting feature brought out by Mr. Haggard 
incidentally is that, in a sense which is more literal than 
figurative, the work of regeneration often means such a 
complete change in a man's nature as is equivalent to the 
casting out of devils. 

He also refers to Twice Born Men, by Harold Beg- 
bie, which is a collection of stories about men ''con- 
verted" through the medium of the Salvation Army, 
as describing instances which ''can literally be 
called the 'rebirth.' " 

Mr. Roosevelt was an earnest student of the BiUe, 
as shown in another chapter. He knew how to use 
it aptly, as seen in his Egyptian address, when he 



270 EOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

said : "It is for us of the New World to sit at the 
feet of Gamaliel of the Old, then, if we have right 
stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can 
become a teacher as well as a scholar." 

Or he can give a pungent exegesis of a verse, as 
in the article ''Character and Success," in The Out- 
look (March 31, 1900) : 

He must refrain from whatever is evil. But besides re- 
fraining from evil tie must do good — the Bible always in- 
culcates the need of the positive no less than the negative 
virtues. . . . We are bidden not only to be harmless as 
doves, but also as wise as serpents. ... If with the best 
of intentions we can only manage to deserve the epithet of 
"harmless," it is hardly worth while to have lived in the 
world at all. 

It is not so easy to find witnesses to the fact that 
he regularly practiced the custom of fo7inal prayer. 
When we find conclusive evidences of family affection 
it is not necessary to show that there are times of 
sacred communion in that home. It is taken for 
granted. Mr. Roosevelt, however, did his praying in 
the closet, since he employed it to get power and not 
to be "seen of men," and there are countless incidents 
only explainable by the presence of that "iDOwer." 
After careful research I am convinced that Mr. 
Roosevelt prayed in the modern way, not to present 
a detailed list of needs but to be sure communica- 
tions were open so that he could get his directions 
from God and receive the heartening "Well done" 
from his heavenly Father. 

In Cromwell's life, Mr. Roosevelt, after condemn- 
ing the old method of forcing everyone to accept an 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 271 

edict or law of the government as infallible interpre- 
tation of the will of God, cordially approves a com- 
mon ^'search'' of the people as a surer method of find- 
ing that will. He asserts that it is commendable for 
men to ^^come together to search after truth ; to try 
to find the true will of God.'^ He so frequently 
speaks of a guiding "light" that it must be concluded 
that it came as direction from above. This seems 
evident in his reference as he closes an article on 
"National Life and Character" : 

Be this as it may, we gladly agree that the one plain 
duty of every man is to face the future as he faces the 
present, regardless of what it may have in store for him, 
and turning toward the light as he sees the light, to play 
his part manfully, as a man among men (American Ideals, 
p. 302). 

Mr. Loeb, who has attended church in many dif- 
ferent places with Mr. Roosevelt, said : "He always 
went through all of the ritual, which included the 
reading of prayers." 

Dean Lewis said in answer to a query : 

If you mean did he join in the prayers when at a re- 
ligious service, or at a public service when the exercises 
partook of a religious character, or did he join in repeating 
the Lord's Prayer, or other formal prayer, my answer is 
"Yes." 

These prayers were not an empty ceremonial, for 
as Mrs. Robinson said: 

My brother would never go through the mere form of 
prayer simply because it was a custom. He would do it 
only because he believed it brought him some benefit. His 



272 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

custom of repeating the prayer in a church service must, 
therefore, have expressed his high valuation of prayer. 

Mrs. Robinson further felt sure that her brother 
continued his custom of saying the prayer taught 
him at home at least until after he had completed 
his college course. And she added, "There is no 
information to show that he ever ceased the custom.'^ 
Many men of large gifts continue to repeat the 
prayer taught them in childhood. Dr. Talmage, his 
pastor at Oyster Bay, assured me that Mr. Roosevelt 
rested much confidence in prayer and followed the 
habit of personally offering petitions to God. In 
another place in this book an incident is recounted 
where he was found kneeling on the grave of William 
McKinley. 

In The Outlook article already mentioned he 
quotes with approval the contention that ''outside 
of materialism lie the forces of a wholly different 
world, a world ordered by religion, . . . which must, 
if loyal to itself, work according to its own nature 
as a spiritual activity, striving to transform men 
from within, and not from without, by persuasion, 
by example, by prayer, ^^ etc. Evidently, he here gives 
prayer a place as a medium of development. 

The Micah passage has a clause "walk humbly 
with thy God," and Dr. Lambert easily agreed: 
"Mr. Roosevelt doubtless saw in this an approval 
of a prayer that gave fellowship with God. His 
early training and habit would lead him to that. 
Such habits are not easily laid aside." 

He was accustomed to write such expressions as 



A CHRISTIAN? HIS OWN TESTIMONY 273 

^Tor all my children I pray," etc. Dr. Iglehart was 
talking with him about his four sons in the war zone 
and added: 

We know that the boys will do brave fighting and we 
will hope and pray that God will send them back to you. 

Mr. Roosevelt's answer asserted a habit of prayer: 

It is my constant prayer to God that in his mercy he 
will spare them. ... It is not likely that all will come back 
from such a deadly war, but we will have to leave them in 
the hands of a good God who doeth all things well {Igleliart, 
p. 275). 

Mr. Leary also quotes him as saying : "I pray God 
will send them [his sons] back to me safe and 
sound" (p. 240). 

Gifford Pinchot agreed that ''Mr. Roosevelt would 
never say 'I pray' unless he meant that he actually 
did so." None who have measured his sincerity and 
his reverential use of sacred words would accredit 
him with saying ''I pray" as a mere form of speech. 
He doubtless referred to his habitual custom in a 
perfectly natural way. 

He regularly took "communion" (observed the 
Lord's supper) which is always recognized as the 
most intimate form of prayer. 

Mr. Roosevelt lived the glad-free life of a conscious 
son of God. All who are fathers would say, ''Well 
done" to such a son as Theodore Roosevelt— and our 
God is a Father. 

An editorial in a small Kansas town paper epito- 
mizes his life well : 



274 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"Put out the light, please." These were the last words he 
said on whom now light eternal shines. . . . When it 
seemed the time was ripe to serve his country best, now 
he rests. His work on earth was done, else he had stayed 
to finish it. No life goes back to its Maker incomplete, 
though our earthly eyes not always read the story to its 
end. The end for him is but the beginning of a sure presage 
of immortality. Such souls were never made to be de- 
stroyed, but to go on and on to wider fields and newer 
achievements, fitted to the powers which here on earth were 
as a sacred trust held blameless, stainless, and inviolate 
(The Liberal News, Kansas). 



CHAPTER XIII 
A PURE AND REVERENT MIND 

"A man who is to live a clean and honorable life must 
inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not clean and 
honorable." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

Set the believers an example of speech, behavior, love, 
faith and purity.— i Tim. 4. 12 (Moffatt's translation). 

"X T" "^^ strength was as the strength of ten, be- 
I I cause his heart was pure." Thus wrote the 
poet of Sir Galahad, who sought the Holy 
Grail. The world's conception of such purity puts 
it only in the realm of poetry and fiction. Sir Gala- 
had first heard of the Holy Grail through the vision 
of a nun, and she girded him for the journey with a 
girdle made from her beautiful hair. Mankind has 
always looked upon such a knight as incarnating an 
ideal unattainable on the hard battlefield of every- 
day life, and therefore only a mythical character. 
The red blood of courage is too often wrongly ex- 
cused if it runs into excesses. When, however, men 
have pure hearts their strength is multiplied. If 
successful while impure, they would have increased 
their success many times if pure ; it is written in the 
law of life. 

The writer has asked very many men who knew 
Mr. Roosevelt the question, "How did you know that 

275 



276 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Mr. Roosevelt was a Christian?" Very many imme- 
diately replied practically as follows : ^'Because he 
was so clean of mind and tongue. I never heard him 
tell an off-color story, nor would he listen to one. 
Even profanity would slip out of conversation in 
his presence. Men felt the loftiness of his spirit. He 
was not prudish or artificially Puritanical, but 
purity fitted him so naturally as to be unnoticed as 
a distinct trait." 

It is now less common to ignore immorality in men 
than in former days. Medical science has demon- 
strated the authority of God's law by exhibiting the 
inexorable results of transgressions in this field. 
Mr. Roosevelt was far ahead of his day in opposing 
immoral practices which were then supposed to be 
excusable among strong men. He was so fearless 
and sturdy that no one dared to question his genuine 
masculinity. He could use his fists or a gun. He 
could face unflinchingly any issue, group, or indi- 
vidual and stand alone when necessary. At the same 
time he was not a recluse or an ascetic but added to 
the fun of every crowd and was at home anywhere. 

While he was a virile, vigorous man of force and 
fire, yet he had such a sense of reverence and control 
of himself that he did not use profanity. When 
General Leonard Wood was once told that Mr. Roose- 
velt was a swearing man he said that such a report 
was preposterous and added that when Theodore 
"gets mad enough to swear he cannot do so because 
immediately he begins to stutter." His very tongue 
was prepared against it. In the same strain, Julian 
Street says about his "strong" words : 



A PURE AND REVERENT MIND 277 

Though his language is forcible, it is never "strong" in 
the usual sense of that word as applied to language. . . . 
He is himself what he called Admiral Mahan, "a Christian 
gentleman," but, as Disraeli wrote of someone, "his Chris- 
tianity is muscular." 

I talked to him on many subjects which had he been 
a profane man would have elicited profanity, but he was 
not betrayed. . . . 

Quite the most awful word I have ever heard him apply 
to any man was the word "Skunk-k-k," applied by him in 
a moment of great irritation. . . . 

He doesn't need to swear, because he can say "Pacifist" 
or the name of some condemned individual in tones which 
must make the recording angel shudder. But the only 
Roosevelt "dam" is the one they named for him in Arizona. 

Herman Kohlsaat in a series of ''Reminiscences" 
credited Mr. Roosevelt with saying, "He is a damn 
fine fellow.'^ Mark Sullivan, the well-known 
''writer," immediately challenged the statement and 
declared that from a wide and intimate acquaintance 
with Mr. Roosevelt he could positively affirm that 
the "Colonel" never used the word "damn." He then 
quotes a long list of Mr. Roosevelt's friends who 
agree with him that they never heard him use that 
word. 

It is very difficult to convince the ordinary Amer- 
ican that the vigorous Roosevelt did not swear. Many 
men insist that only mollycoddles refrain. I asked 
twenty or twenty-five men the question, "Did you 
ever hear Mr. Roosevelt take the name of God in 
vain?" With only one exception (and that with a 
single newspaper correspondent who reports one 
break-over during the war) men who have fought by 
his side, traveled with him on campaigns, fellow- 



278 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

shiped in recreation, and lived in his home, insist 
that they never heard him use God's name in pro- 
fanity. Some of them are here reported. 

Dr. Lambert, his physician, who was usually his 
hunting comrade and warm associate, said to me : 

I never even heard him explode in anger with expletives, 
much less take the name of God in vain. He would shut 
others off who while mad would begin to scold. He would 
send them away until they cooled off. I remember that 
even "Hellroaring Bill," who punctuated every few words 
with an oath, for some reason almost completely ceased 
when in Mr. Roosevelt's presence, although he never said 
a word to him about it. 

Mr. Payne, a newspaper correspondent, who traveled 
much with him, affirmed: 

He never used the name of God in vain. In fact, I never 
heard him even use slang as an anger explosive. When at 
rare intervals he said "damn" it was employed to express 
discipline rather than as a vituperative. 

Mr. Van Valkenburg, one of his closest advisers, 
told me : 

I never heard him take God's name in vain. He never 
lost control of his temper, though at times he could whip 
out cutting words. Very few men swore in his presence. 
Something seemed to restrain them. 

In a libel suit in Michigan many witnesses testi- 
fied that he was not a profane man. W. Emlen 
Roosevelt, first cousin of Mr. Roosevelt, who lived 
next door to him in New York and in Oyster Bay 
and was with him as playmate and intimate friend 
until his death, was asked at that time: 

Q. I ask you from your knowledge what can you say 



A PUEE AND REVERENT MIND 279 

as to the habits of the plaintiff as to profanity? A. I can 
say that he has one of the cleanest mouths — 

Q, Does he indulge in it or not? A. He does not. 

At the same trial, Gifford Pinchot when asked if 
he had ever heard Mr. Roosevelt indulge in pro- 
fanity or obscenity, replied : "I have not." 

Mr. Dulany traveled and lived with Mr. Roosevelt 
at Oyster Bay and at Washington almost constantly 
for eight years. He had a confidential relationship, 
handling his letters, state papers, and even his pri- 
vate purse. Mr. Cheney affirmed: 

Mr. Dulany declares that he never heard President Roose- 
velt use a profane word, nor relate a story that could not be 
repeated in a drawing room in the presence of ladies; that 
he was always good-natured and jovial, treating every 
member of the Presidential party very cordially at all 
times. 

He did not sting his secretaries with sarcasm or 
scold so bitterly as to make people feel worse than if 
they had been really sworn at even while driven by 
his work. He could direct forked lightning to hit the 
guilty, and hence used good, plain English when it 
was required. Because he was not upset by personal 
vindictiveness, however, he could barb his shafts 
thoughtfully and did not require swear words to 
prong them. He did not use profanity like some who 
do so when their vocabulary fails them. He coined 
phrases much stronger than any which were sharp- 
ened and poisoned with profane invective. Some of 
these phrases were *'rosewater reformers," "out- 
patients of Bedlam," "nature fakers," "muck rakers," 



280 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

"molly coddlers," "malefactors of gi-eat wealth," "un- 
desirable citizens," "common thieves," "an elder 
Buddy-duddy with sweet-bread brains." 

He had a favorite phrase which hurriedly spoken 
might sound wrong. He used it to Mr. Leary in in- 
sisting on political honesty. Here it is : 

And, by Godfrey, I mean it! If there's a mongrel plat- 
form adopted by the Republican Convention, much as I 
dislike Wilson, I'll stump the country for him from one 
end of it to the other, and I won't ask his permission to 
do it, either. 

Mr. Roosevelt could not endure a lie — nor employ 
one nor dodge behind a white one called subterfuge 
or "diplomacy." 

In a sermon while pastor of Grace Methodist 
Church, New York, on the subject, "Is it Ever Right 
to Lie?" I made a statement with reference to Mr. 
Roosevelt's customs concerning interviews. That 
statement became badly twisted as reported by the 
daily papers so that Mr. Roosevelt was described as 
frequently denjdng authentic interviews. He had 
such high regard for the ministry that he rightfully 
wrote a very sharp letter of rebuke. (See letter, 
page 281.) 

My reply to this letter, which completely satisfied 
him, follows ; 

Dear Colonel Roosevelt: 

In my judgment nobody In fifty years has done as much 
as you have for the advancement of righteousness and the 
upbuilding of the kingdom of God, and in no circumstances 
would I slander your high and fine character or willfully 
misrepresent you. You have always been one of my idols. 



A PURE AND REVERENT MIND 281 

METROPOIITAN 

432 FOURTH AVENUE NEW YORK 

Otfceof Karch EnA.^lOX?, 

Theodore Roosevelt 



Dear Dr. Pelsne*: 

Id a clipping aent to me, In a 3ennon of 
■yours, you are tiuoted as saying that it la my alleged 
praotloeto deny my .statements. If they are rerealed 
through a broken confidence, coupling this- allegation of 
yours with various other similar statemente about diplomats 



and Jesuits. You are a clergyTian, and you have no 
buslnesB to make a public statement about any man, which 
iB discreditable to him, unless you kno.? your facts. The 
statement -that you make about me Is pure slander, -.vhich the 
slightest inquiry would have taught you was slander, 
neither you, nor anyone else can In all my career , find any 
Instance In which I have ever denied a statement I have 
eotually made, 

.Sincerely yours, 

You have had so much to do with newspapers that you 
can understand how, when they edit to condense a state- 
ment, they may not catch it as it was intended. If I did 
you an injustice, I am most heartily sorry and assure you 
that it was in no wise intended. My statement was, that 
you were reputed to assert that anyone who betrayed a 
confidence, by that act elected himself a member of the 
Ananias Club. Having so denominated the man who broke 
your confidence, you took no trouble to deny or afllrm the 
statement which exhibited the fact that he had betrayed 
your confidence. 



282 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

I did not say nor affirm, nor was it in my being to think, 
that you ever deny an exact statement, for I am confident 
that you are too moral, too Christian, and too manly to do 
that. The close relationship between diplomats and Jesuits 
occurred because later paragraphs were boiled down by 
the newspaper into a sentence. 

This letter evidently stated his position correctly, 
for almost immediately the following came back 
from him: 

METROPOUIAM 

432 FOURTH AVEMUE NEWYORX. 

Ofucof aarafel5.19in 

TKeodore Roosevell 



My dear fir, fiel finer; 

That's a very flna and manly latter or yoCTB,, 
I aa Tery glad you made the etatamaat Inaarauch as It 
brought me such a letter •, 

With heartiest good wiehea, 

Faithfully* youre , 

This letter developed a personal friendship that 
ripened in many subsequent calls and conferences. 
The charge sometimes made that he denied incon- 
venient interviews is hereby completelj^ controverted. 

He never pardoned anybody convicted of dishon- 



A PURE AND REVERENT MIND 283 

esty in a public trust. That was to him a most con- 
temptible crime. It not only secured unearned funds 
as in ordinary thievery but it poisoned common 
faith in law and the government back of it and so 
endangered peace and encouraged anarchy. 

No kind of "influence" ever reached him. He was 
vigorously questioned by a Republican investigating 
committee from the Senate during his Progressive 
campaign, and one senator, referring to a contribu- 
tion to a former Republican campaign by a corpora- 
tion, asked: ''As a practical man would you think 
they would expect some consideration in return for 
the contribution?" He shot back, "As a practical 
man, one who knows me and my record and would 
still expect a public favor from me in such circum- 
stances is either a crook or an idiot." 

Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward substantial 
"favors" shown to government officials was under- 
stood even in the early days. He himself recounts an 
incident when with his aide. Lieutenant Sharpe, 
while assistant secretary of the navy, he had spent 
seven million dollars for auxiliary cruisers. It sud- 
denly began to rain. He had only four cents in his 
pocket and tried to borrow one cent or five from 
Sharpe, so that he could ride home on the street car, 
but Sharpe did not have a cent. Then he said : 

Never mind, Sharpe, that's why we will beat the Span- 
iards. It isn't every country where two public servants 
could spend seven million dollars and not have a cent In 
their pockets after they are through.^ 



Trom The Life of Theodore Roosevelt, by William Draper Lewis, p. 126. 
Copyright, The John C. Winston Company. 



284 KOOSEVELT'S KELIGION 

Mr. Roosevelt never used tobacco in any form. He 
was not embarrassed by the fact and never excused 
it. When offered cigars, he frankly told the donors 
that he did not smoke. He is not alone, for Presi- 
dents Washington, Lincoln, Taft, and Wilson also 
never indulged in the use of tobacco. 

Mr. Roosevelt was very fond of "boxing" as an 
exercise but he had no patronage for professional 
pugilism with its bullies and gambling. And so as 
Governor of New York in his message asking for the 
repeal of the then prevalent State boxing law he 
said: 

Boxing is a fine sport, but this affords no justification of 
prize fighting any more than a cross-country run or a ride 
on a wheel is healthy justifies such a demoralizing ex- 
hibition as a six-day race. 

Further on he said : 

In the case of prize fighting not only do all the objec- 
tions which apply to the abuse of other professional sports 
apply in aggravated form, but in addition the exhibition 
has a very demoralizing and brutalizing effect. 

And again: 

Moreover, the evils are greatly aggravated by the fact 
that the fight is for a money prize and is the occasion for 
unlimited gambling and betting. 

The domestic life of Mr. Roosevelt was beautiful 
beyond description. He did not merely board at 
home but contributed to the richness of its atmos- 
phere. He presents an irrefutable rebuke to the one 
who extenuates infidelity and moral carelessness. 
His great heart shed healing and hope because it 



4 



A PURE AND REVERENT MIND 285 

was fed by holy love. He was always a devoted hus- 
band, a consistent father, and a real home helper. 

Many homes are blasted and children damned for- 
ever by the espousal and practice of a double code 
of morals. Theodore Roosevelt advocated and prac- 
ticed one standard of morals for men and women 
alike. He excused nothing in his sons for which he 
would blame his daughters. He declared his con- 
victions clearly and confidently. 

When Mr. Roosevelt was police commissioner he 
prosecuted vice without regard to sex. Just as far 
as the law permitted, he "treated the men" taken 
in raids on dissolute houses "precisely as the women 
were treated." He was very positive in his con- 
viction that this vice should not be tolerated. He 
concludes that he does not know of any method which 
will completely abolish it but he is sure that it can 
be greatly lessened by "treating men and women on 
an exact equality for the same act." 

Senator Lodge in his memorial address before the 
United States Senate paid tribute to his clean ideals 
and habits : 

He had a profound respect for women and never spoke 
disparagingly of them. He abhorred the vulgar and coarse 
of speech, the loose liver and the immoral. His life was a 
clean, normal, wholesome life. His domestic life was what 
every American home should be — as sweet as old-fashioned 
poetry. In all his life Theodore Roosevelt never told a 
vulgar story. 

While police commissioner a group of men, who 
themselves lived vilely in a clandestine way, put soft- 



286 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

footed men to follow him for weeks by day and by 
night, hoping that they would catch him ^'off his 
guard" in evil ways. When told of it he was hot 
with anger even at the mere suggestion that he would 
soil his life and then bring it home to his babies. 
Of course they failed. 

He found no excuse for family scandals and in- 
fidelity. He wrote George Trevelyan expressing 
great satisfaction and delight with the beautiful 
home life of the Italian king and queen, who were 
so evidently loving and faithful to each other. This 
gave him an opportunity to express his condemna- 
tion of domestic immorality, which he feels is in- 
creasingly culpable as the social position of the cul- 
prits increases. He is sharply and clearly critical 
of disgraceful living in high places. 

Dr. Lambert described Mr. Roosevelt's aversion 
to ''divorce" to me : 

Mr. Roosevelt was greatly concerned over the custom 
of treating divorce so lightly in America. He insisted that 
it was becoming so common that morals might get down 
to the plane of the barnyard if we were not guarded. He 
did not understand how society at large could permit it. 
He said, "But perhaps I have the morals of a green grocer, 
they are so old fashioned." 

In Mr. Roosevelt's Pacific Theological Lectures he 
says : "I do not believe in weakness ; I believe in a 
man's being a man ; and for that very reason I abhor 
the creature who uses the expression that a 'man 
must be a man' to excuse his being a vile and vicious 



A PURE AND REVERENT MIND 287 

The Crown Princess of Sweden, while entertaining 
Mr. Roosevelt at dinner during his European tour, 
asked him if Mrs. Roosevelt had refused to receive a 
certain foreign Duke into her home when others 
feted him in America. Mr. Roosevelt told her very 
frankly that this duke had led a scandalously im- 
moral life while in America, only escaping arrest 
because he was a foreign guest of royal birth. He 
then told her that the Russian ambassador had so 
insisted on the President receiving the Duke that it 
would be a diplomatic slight not to do so and he was 
invited to lunch at Sagamore Hill. But Mrs. Roose- 
velt ^^regarded his presence in our private house as 
both a scandal and an insult," said Mr. Roosevelt, 
and announced that she would leave when they ar- 
rived, which she did. The two foreign dignitaries 
were much exercised because she was absent and 
continued to inquire about her. They were made to 
clearly understand that she was ''out" because they 
were "guests" — there was no misunderstanding 
about the cause. When the Princess heard these 
facts she jubilantly called across the table to her 
husband to tell him that her surmise that Mrs. 
Roosevelt would not receive such guests was correct. 
All Europe, even while loose in its standards, was 
familiar with the high standards of our President. 
The Princess then told Mr. Roosevelt that her own 
father had protected her from meeting this same 
Duke because of his unsavory reputation and dis- 
gusting standards of life. When Mr. Roosevelt 
heard that the "Duke" had been shut out of royal 
circles he wrote a friend that he wished Newport 



288 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

circles, which had feted him so wildly, might have 
learned from a less democratic society how to erect 
standards of decency. 

J. B. Bishop, in his Theodore Roosevelt And His 
Times, gives the details. He also recounts the Presi- 
dent's action in the case of a widely known writer 
who forgot his foreign wife while in America. 
When Mr. Roosevelt was urged to receive this loose 
man he refused even to see him and published a 
letter stating that this writer's actions were ''a 
revolt against the ordinary decencies and morali- 
ties." Mr. Roosevelt demanded American ideals in 
moral life as he did sound money in the currency. 
There were no exceptions. Mr. Bishop, after dis- 
cussing these ''foreign" cases with me, gave the 
names of some very noted Americans who were never 
invited to the White House social life because they 
had been divorced under scandalous circumstances. 
Few other circles shut them out. Mr. Bishop con- 
cluded : 

No one with the reputation for loose living— no matter 
how prominent or wealthy — was ever welcomed by Mrs. 
Roosevelt or the President as a guest at the official resi- 
dence. 

Mr. Straus also told me that the President re- 
quested the Cabinet members to give no social recog- 
nition to such ^'tainted" people. 

It would be refreshing in our day of increasingly 
easy and disgusting divorces if others of similar high 
place would speak out in word and example. Mr. 



A PUKE AND KEVEKENT MIND 289 

Eoosevelt would not keep quiet in the face of some 
present-time exhibits. 

His ideals for others were rigidly applied to his 
own life. W. Emlen Roosevelt said to the writer : 

In our childhood, boys were not so wisely instructed 
about sex matters as they are to-day. And yet I remember 
that as a boy Theodore was absolutely pure-minded; it 
seemed to be an innate quality. He could never endure a 
certain acquaintance of mine solely because of his habit 
to slip in a soiled story during conversation. He always 
had a way to stop anyone relating such incidents. 

Richard Welling, recounting personal reminis- 
cences of undergraduate days, says : 

Of escapades as to wine or women there simply were none. 
A man's classmates know. 

My interest in certifying to this is to bring out the 
Aristotelian quality of pure virtue performed without con- 
scious effort, evil overcome by good, no time for mischief, 
no time even to develop a little Puritan asceticism or prig- 
gishness, but always striding forward, toward the accom- 
plishment of some great purpose.^ 

Mr. Loeb told me that during the ten years spent 
with Mr. Roosevelt he had seen him many times turn 
his back and walk away from a man simply because 
the visitor started to tell a "good" story of shady 
color. His reputation as a jolly fellow with strongly 
physical nature blinded them to the clean taste of 
his spirit. 

Mr. Van Valkenburg said to me : "I have never 
known a man who so fully measured up to the 

iFrom "Theodore Roosevelt at Harvard — Some Personal Reminiscences," 
by Richard Welling, in The Outlook for October 27, 1920. 



290 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

standard of chastity as set forth in the teachings of 
Christ." 

Sometimes it took "strong arm" methods from him, 
especially in the cowboy days, to keep the channel 
of conversation clean. But his courage matched his 
convictions. One day a quick-shooting cowboy 
named Jim was telling a disgusting story when Mr. 
Roosevelt came up, looked him straight in the eye 
and said, ''Jim, I like you, but you are the nastiest 
talking man I ever heard." The cowboys were ac- 
customed to see gunplay in such cases, and were sur- 
prised when Jim hung his head in shame and apolo- 
gized. After that they were good friends. 

Mr. John J. Leary, Jr., who was intimately ac- 
quainted with Mr. Roosevelt and traveled with him 
thousands of miles as a newspaper correspondent, 
wrote me: 

Roosevelt was not only a clean man; he just radiated 
cleanness. 

In an address to young men, at a Y. M. C. A. meet- 
ing, Mr. Roosevelt advised : 

You cannot retain your self-respect if you are loose and 
foul of tongue. A man who is to lead a clean and honorable 
life must inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not 
clean and honorable. The future welfare of the nation de- 
pends upon the way in which we can combine in our young 
men decency and strength. 

Purity and reverence are inseparable associates. 
Each aids the other. To be irreverent in using God's 
name is to depreciate the love and wisdom which 



A PURE AND REVEKENT MIND 291 

stand back of the laws of right made for man. When 
pure love is sullied the basis for genuine love is 
spoiled and the spiritual, which is love in action, 
becomes discolored, stagnant, and paralyzed. Gen- 
uine satisfying religion is as impossible to the im- 
pure or irreverent as the use of the optical nerves 
is to eyes covered with cataracts or the use of finger 
touch is to the paralyzed arm. On the other hand, 
the pure and reverent find it easy to be disciples of 
the Great Teacher who came to reveal God and 
promised, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God." This is not a promise for the future 
but is to be realized in this world and now. When 
men thus see the Leader their steps may be ordered 
aright, and they may go forward and that fearlessly. 
And here again Mr. Roosevelt's faith backed by 
obedience to God's laws demonstrated not only that 
he was a Christian but that he was rendered efficient 
by that fact. 



CHAPTER XIV 
DRINKING AND PROHIBITION 

"I have never claimed to be a total abstainer, but I drink 
as little as most total abstainers, for I really doubt whether 
on an average, year in and year out, I drink more than is 
given for medicinal purposes to many people." — Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

Blessed art thou, O Land, when . . . thy princes eat in 
due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness! — 
Eccl. 10. 17. 

THE problems presented by intoxicating drink 
are vital, and Christians must face and 
answer them. They can never be completely 
settled by law. Much depends upon the attitude of 
the citizenship. It will be interesting, therefore, 
to find Mr. Roosevelt's position toward it. 

He graphically described the origin of the rumor 
that he drank to excess and the subsequent libel 
suit: 

"Did you ever smoke?" someone asked. 

"There is where that story of my drinking started," Mr. 
Roosevelt continued, not hearing the question or ignoring 
it. "You see, when I would decline a cigar, saying I did 
not smoke, folks would often ask, in a joking way, 'What 
are your bad habits?' In the same spirit, I would reply, 
'Prize fighting and strong drink.' . . . 

"I am very fond of that story of Sidney Smith's, who, 
playing with his children, stopped suddenly, saying, 'Chil- 
dren, we must now be serious — here comes a fool.' You 

292 



DKINKING AND PKOHIBITION 293 

know the kind he meant — those poor unfortunates who 
must take everything said to them literally. 

"One of these to whom I made that remark said: 'Roose- 
velt, I hear, drinks hard.' The other fool replied, 'Yes, 
that's true. He told me so himself,' and so it went. 

"That is all there ever was to the talk of my drinking. 
From that start it spread and spread until, in self-defense, 
I was compelled to take action to stop it. Some folks said 
I went out of my way to find a little editor who could not 
well defend himself. The fact is, he was the one editor I 
could hold to account. There were, and are, editors nearer 
New York I gladly would have sued in like circumstances, 
but they knew better than to print what they knew was 
untrue. Had any of them done so, I would have hauled 
them up short, and with much more glee than I did the 
Michigan man, for the men I have in mind have real malice 
toward me and he, I am satisfied, had none."^ 

George A. Newett published a weekly paper called 
The Iron Ore at Ishpeming, Michigan, which had a 
local circulation of twenty-five hundred. He had 
been appointed postmaster in 1905 by President 
Roosevelt but had resigned. He claimed in his testi- 
mony to have supported Mr. Roosevelt's candidacies 
even as far as to back him as his second choice for 
the nomination in 1912, when Mr. Taft was his first 
choice. He, however, turned against Mr. Roosevelt 
very vigorously when he ran as third party or Pro- 
gressive candidate and after a speech by Mr. Roose- 
velt attacking the local candidate for Congress, a 
personal friend of Mr. Newett's, The Iron Ore as- 
sailed him viciously. Among other things it said : 

According to Roosevelt, he is the only man who can call 



^Talks With T. R., Leary, p. 22f. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Com- 
pany. 



294 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

others liars, rascals, and thieves, . . . but if anyone calls 
Roosevelt a liar, he raves and roars and takes on in an 
awful way. Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting 
way; he gets drunk too, and that not infrequently. 

In his testimony Mr. Newett declared that in far 
Western trips and in other sections he had heard 
continued rumors that Mr. Roosevelt was drunk, 
but when he tried to get evidence no one had actually 
seen him drunk nor was anyone willing to testify that 
he drank to excess. Because at banquets and other 
social occasions he was exuberant and apparently 
overboisterous, his enemies and thoughtless critics 
announced that alcoholic spirits created his spirited 
actions. But the evidence proved that his own words 
were true, "I drink about as much as Lyman Abbott, 
and I say this with his permission." 

Mr. Roosevelt brought thirty-five witnesses, among 
whom were the most noted men in America. There 
were newspaper men, detectives, house servants, po- 
litical associates, Cabinet compeers, relatives, doc- 
tors, travel companions, secretaries, and intimate 
friends. They had lived with him in his home, 
played with him in recreations, been his traveling 
companions across the country and in foreign lands, 
acted as his confidants, enjoyed his intimate hos- 
pitality and had seen him at all hours of the day and 
night. With their evidence he traced his career from 
college days up to that minute and in every detail of 
his activities in the purpose to disprove the charges 
made by Newett. Some of these men were Jacob A. 
Riis, Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews ; 
Lyman Abbott, Dr. Lambert, his long-time physician ; 



DKINKING AND PROHIBITION 295 

Dr. Rixey, his medical adviser while President ; Wil- 
liam F. Loeb, his private secretary ; W. Emlen Roose- 
velt, his cousin; James Sloan, his secret service 
guard; Gilson Gardner, Gifford Pinchot, James R. 
Garfield, Robert Bacon, George B. Cortelyou, Ad- 
miral Dewey, and General Leonard Wood. 

After going over all the evidence given at the 
trial, I am convinced that he never drank brandy 
except a very few times, and then by order of a physi- 
cian. He consumed a dozen or so mint juleps in 
the course of his entire life. He infrequently drank 
light wine which was put on his home table only 
when there was company at a meal, and this because 
it was the continuation of a Dutch custom as old as 
his family. He had never ''drunk liquor or porter." 
He affirmed : ''I have never taken a high ball or a 
cocktail in my life." He disliked beer and said, 
"I do not drink beer." On the African trip he af- 
firmed, ''I never touched one drop of either the cham- 
pagne or whisky," which was taken along. At big 
banquets and at state dinners he drank in a formal 
way and never more than two glasses of champagne, 
usually in responding to toasts. During the Cuban 
campaign, "I drank nothing — I had no whisky or 
brandy with me." He had never been in a saloon 
barroom but twice, and that in the cowboy days 
when it was the hotel oflQce, and then he never once 
drank over the bar. 

C. W. Thompson, who as the correspondent of a 
great city paper opposed to him was paid to travel 
with and report diligently any disparaging actions 
or conditions, testified : 



296 KOOSEYELT'S KELIGION 

He could not possibly have taken liquor to affect him in 
the least degree without my knowing it. I was there to 
watch him and take note of every single action he per- 
formed. 

William Loeb testified that during his ten years 
as secretary he had offered him whisky a few times 
when he felt it was needed, but Mr. Roosevelt in- 
variably refused it. James R. Garfield said that 
even after the long, hard rides he took with Mr. 
Roosevelt, and they came in "cold and wet and tired, 
there was nothing taken but tea." Few men in any 
walk of life could excel that record, especially if 
active in politics during the period covered by Mr. 
Roosevelt. 

Mr. Newett closed his testimony with a long state- 
ment, concluding as follows : 

In the face of the unqualified testimony of so many dis- 
tinguished men who have been in a position for years to 
know the truth, I am forced to the conclusion that I was 
mistaken. 

Mr. Roosevelt followed Mr. Newett's statement to 
the court by suggesting that very small damages be 
assessed and that only because the charge against 
him must be refuted. 

Said Mr. Roosevelt : 

Your Honor, in view of the statement of the defendant, I 
ask the Court to instruct the jury that I desire only nominal 
damages. I did not go into this suit for money, I did not 
go into it for any vindictive purpose. I went into it, and 
as the court has said, I made my reputation an issue, be- 
cause I wished, once for all during my lifetime, thoroughly 
and comprehensively to deal with these slanders, so that 



DKINKING AND PROHIBITION 297 

never again will it be possible for any man, in good faith, 
to repeat them. 

I have achieved my purpose and I am content. 

Mr. Roosevelt never did a more courageous thing 
than to air this charge in public. To this day men 
shut the evidence of this trial out and carelessly and 
stubbornly affirm that Mr. Roosevelt was accus- 
tomed to drink to excess. That is an absolute false- 
hood and criminal slander. If it were true, then 
high righteousness such as ruled in Mr. Roosevelt's 
life could root not only in an alcohol addled brain 
but in a lying and hypocritical soul. 

Mr. Loeb told me how stiff Mr. Roosevelt was in 
refusing to follow old ''drinking" customs : 

The old-fashioned "Dutch" home to which Mr. Roosevelt 
and his relatives were accustomed always had two or 
three kinds of wine on the table. But Mr. Roosevelt even 
then did not drink it frequently. He greatly grieved my 
wife by refusing to drink wine at our table. When he would 
come back into camp while on a hunt, wet and cold after a 
long day's hunt and when others took whisky to ward off 
a cold, he refused to do so. 

When the official bulletin was issued by the sur- 
geon at the Chicago Hospital, where he lay after 
being shot at Milwaukee, it said : ''We find him in a 
magnificent physical condition, due to his regular 
exercise, his habitual abstinence from tobacco and 
liquor." 

When the rumors of Mr. Roosevelt's drinking were 
running wild the Rev. Dr. Iglehart sent him a tele- 
gram and received the following reply : 



298 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

You are absolutely correct. I have never claimed to be 
a total abstainer, but I drink as little as most total ab- 
stainers, for I really doubt whether on an average, year in 
and year out, I drink more than is given for medicinal pur- 
poses to many people. I never touch whisky, and I have 
never drunk a cocktail or a highball in my life. I doubt 
whether I have drunk a dozen teaspoonfuls of brandy 
since I came back from Africa, and as far as I now recollect, 
in each case it was for medicinal purposes. In Africa dur- 
ing the eleven months I drank exactly seven ounces of 
brandy; this was under our doctor's direction in my first 
fever attack, and once when I was completely exhausted. 
My experience on these two occasions convinced me that 
tea was better than brandy, and during the last six months 
in Africa I took no brandy when sick, taking tea instead 
(Iglehart, p. 322). 

R. J. Cuninghame, the famous African hunter, 
who was with the Colonel on his trip in that country, 
in an interview in the New York Times, said : 

I'd like to say what I know. The expedition was strictly 
dry. There was, however, a special bottle of brandy of the 
very finest brand which belonged to the Colonel. He never 
touched a drop of it. 

But at last he had a touch of fever and the surgeon 
ordered him a dose of his own brandy. It was measured 
out like medicine, perhaps two ounces or three in water. 
He drank it and at once spat it out. He explained that as 
soon as spirits entered his throat, his muscles always auto- 
matically contracted and rejected them. 

Later the surgeon mixed a dose of the brandy with 
salad oil and insisted that if Mr. Roosevelt did not 
take this brandy he would inject morphine into his 
throat. He was then finally able to get it down. Mr. 
Cuninghame added that when the trip was ended he 



DEINKING AND PKOHIBITION 299 

measured that bottle of brandy and only two doses 
were gone, the one the Colonel could not keep on his 
stomach and the other mixed by the doctor with oil. 

While on the Panama inspection trip when he was 
offered a "Panama cocktail" of quinine and brandy 
he declined it, and instead took from his own pocket 
a two grain quinine pill, which he had provided 
against the malarial weather. 

Canteens where intoxicants were sold had long 
been permitted in the army. After a long fight they 
were finally driven out. But the liquor forces rallied 
and threatened to restore them and Dr. Iglehart 
went to Washington to secure President Koosevelt's 
aid, who assured him : 

Do not be alarmed. The removal of the drink from the 
army was a most fortunate thing for the men themselves 
and the nation they represent, and I promise you that so 
long as I am President, or so long as I shall have any in- 
fluence whatever in the Republican party or in American 
politics, intoxicants shall never come back into the canteen 
(Iglehart, p. 320). 

As early as September, 1907, President Roosevelt 
showed his friendship for prohibition when he wrote 
D. D. Thompson, the editor of the Northwestern 
Christian Advocate at Chicago, concerning the adop- 
tion of the Constitution for the new State of Okla- 
homa: 

I felt greatly relieved by the adoption of the prohibition 
article in the Constitution; for without this I should have 
been seriously concerned as to the future of the Indians. 

He gave his calm and clear decision against the 



300 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

saloon, when he classed it as a source of endless 
evil in another letter to Dr. Iglehart : 

There could have been no more practical illustration of 
the hideous evil wrought by the liquor traffic than was af- 
forded by the results of its stoppage for the few Sundays 
during which we were able to keep the saloons absolutely 
closed. During this period, the usual mass of individuals 
up in the courts on Monday morning, on charges of being 
drunk or disorderly and committing assaults, diminished 
by two thirds or over. The hospitals, such as Bellevue, 
showed a similar diminution of persons brought to them 
because of alcoholism and crimes due to drunkenness. 
. . . Men who would otherwise have stayed in New York 
drinking, while their wives and children suffered in the 
heated tenement houses, took these same wives and chil- 
dren for a Sunday holiday in the country (Iglehart, p. 323). 

In an article on ^'The New York Police," written 
in 1897, he asserts : 

The liquor business does not stand on the same footing 
with other occupations. It always tends to produce crim- 
inality in the population at large and law breaking among 
the saloonkeepers themselves (American IdcaU, p. 175). 

He also finds a ready explanation of the low type 
of men nominated for office in those days by the fact 
that the primaries were so largely held in saloons. 

It is this that gives the liquor sellers their enormous in- 
fluence in politics. Preparatory to the general election of 
1884 there were held in the various districts of New York 
ten hundred and seven primaries and political conventions 
of all parties, and of these no less than six hundred and 
thirty-three took place in liquor saloons — a showing that 



DKINKING AND PROHIBITION 301 

leaves small ground for wonder at the low average grade 
of the nominees ("Machine Politics in New York City," 
Ameincan Ideals, p. 121), 

How did he propose to meet this evil? At the 
beginning of his career his central contest was with 
the wealthy men who sought, demanded, and pur- 
chased preferential treatment in legislative and 
legal matters. Consequently, he did not get down 
close to a consideration of social questions until 
later in life, when he followed a course that led him 
ultimately to heartily support the remarkable pro- 
gram of the Progressive Party. He then began to 
see the relation of the saloon to the social problem 
and therefore he was not unfriendly to a plank in the 
Progressive platform expressing antipathy to the 
saloon ; in fact, such a resolution came near to being 
inserted. 

But did he favor Prohibition? 

Mr. Leary feels positive that Mr. Roosevelt did not 
favor the Eighteenth Amendment but, rather, was 
convinced that the liquor question would solve itself 
as people increasingly learned its evil effects. Mr. 
Leary's statement led Andrew B. Wood, assistant 
superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League, to print 
an answer in the New York Tribune. He called at- 
tention to the fact that Mr. Leary quoted no declara- 
tion by Mr. Roosevelt against the Eighteenth Amend- 
ment but reported him as saying : "I shall not allow 
it or anything else to swerve me from the [war] 
work we are now in." That, Mr. Wood insisted, was 
different from opposing it, but, rather, evidenced the 



302 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

fact that he felt that all his strength was needed 
to push the war. Continuing, Mr. Wood writes : 

He recognized the merits of both the suffrage and prohi- 
bition campaigns and said to the Hon. Wayne B. Wheeler, 
of Washington, and Colonel L. B. Musgrove, of Alabama, 
that he had to break that rule [demanding single devotion 
to specific war activities] in order to help the suffrage 
fight, and if it became necessary, he would do it again in 
order to help prohibition. In my interview, which was with 
reference to prohibition and the Republican party in New 
York and the nation, in speaking of the progress of prohi- 
bition and its ultimate achievements by ratification, he said, 
"I will do everything I can to make it possible." 

Mr. Wood further calls attention to a letter writ- 
ten to Dr. Iglehart on December 17, 1917, right after 
Congress had submitted the National Prohibition 
Amendment, which seems to prove that he helped to 
get the bill through Congress : 

My dear Dr. Iglehart: 

I thank you for your book and appreciate ygur sending 
it to me and I wish to congratulate you on what has hap- 
pened in Congress and the success that is crowning your 
long fight against alcoholism. The American saloon has 
been one of the most mischievous elements in American 
social, political, and industrial life. No man has warred 
more valiantly against it than you have, and I am glad that 
it has been my privilege to stand with you in the contest. 

When Governor Charles S. Whitman was a candi- 
date for a third term as Governor, the political bosses 
of the State felt sure that he would not be reelected, 
but at the same time they were helpless because they 
could get no candidate to supplant him. In their 



DRINKING AND PROHIBITION 303 

desperation they appealed to Mr. Roosevelt, who 
they felt confident could both be nominated and 
elected. They therefore sent Horace Wilkinson to 
interview him, hoping that he could be persuaded to 
accept the nomination. Mr. Roosevelt, knowing the 
wet views of William Barnes, promptly informed 
Mr. Wilkinson that if everything else were removed 
there was yet one insuperable obstacle to his accept- 
ing the nomination. He explained that the people 
who were in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment, 
making prohibition effective nationally, would ask 
him for his position on that subject. He knew that 
Mr. Barnes and his advisers were opposed to it, but 
declared that if he were asked, he would promptly 
state that he was in favor of passing the eighteenth 
Amendment. Mr. AVilkinson reported immediately 
to Mr. Barnes, who replied: '^I don't care a damn 
whether he is for prohibition or against it. The peo- 
ple will vote for him because he is Theodore Roose- 
velt." This clearly puts Mr. Roosevelt on record 
as in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment. If he had 
run, he would have taken the same clear-cut and 
laudable j)osition that Charles S. Whitman did. Mr. 
Bishop makes this very clear in his book, Theodore 
Roosevelt and His Times. AVith these facts in mind, 
I asked Mr. McGrath, who was Mr. Roosevelt's secre- 
tary at about that time, what he thought Mr. Roose- 
velt's attitude was toward prohibition. He replied : 

Mr. Roosevelt did not think the time was yet ripe to adopt 
national prohibition. He felt that the gradual progress of 
prohibition through legislation by various States would 
finally educate the people so that they would demand and 



304 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

enforce it. He feared that if approved now, it would lead 
to harmful laxness in great cities. But when he faced the 
question of adoption or rejection, he preferred to see it go 
into effect now with all the dangers of working it out to 
success than for it to have the backset a rejection would 
give it. 

This man, so passionately devoted to the service 
of his fellow men, could not leave liquor out of ac- 
count when he found that it' ruined his fellows, 
wrecked their homes, and multiplied crime. He was 
convinced of all these facts. Therefore, loving his 
weaker brother, he would do the thing which he be- 
lieved would protect him from the ravages of alcohol 
as he would to guard him against the use of opium 
or the incursions of tuberculosis. 



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CHAPTER XV 
HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 

"If a man is not familiar with the Bible he has suffered 
a loss which he had better make all possible haste to cor- 
rect." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

All Scripture is . . . profitable for teaching, for reproof, 
for amendment, for moral discipline, to make the man of 
God proficient and equip him for good work of every kind. 
—2 Tim. 3. 16, 17 (Moffatt's translation). 

WHEN he was forty-two years of age, or 
twenty-one years after his graduation 
from Harvard, Mr. Roosevelt was inau- 
gurated Vice-President of the United States. On 
that occasion the Harvard Republican Club pre- 
sented him with an appropriately inscribed copy of 
the Bible. After his death Mrs. Roosevelt sent the 
American Bible Society a photograph of that Bible 
with the comment that it was the one book which 
Mr. Roosevelt always "kept at his hand on the read- 
ing stand in the north room at Sagamore Hill." 
Mrs. Roosevelt further added in the letter to the So- 
ciety : "I should like the world to know how large 
a part his deep knowledge of the Bible played in my 
husband's life." 

Mrs. Robinson told me about the "pigskin" library 
which Mr. Roosevelt carried to Africa, saying : 

When my brother decided to make the African trip I 
requested the privilege of furnishing a pigskin bound li- 

305 



306 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

brary for him to take along. The first book selected for 
this library was the Bible; he could not do without that 
book. He read it a great deal. He counted it a literary 
masterpiece. He also read it for inspiration and conso- 
lation. 

In 1901 Mr. Roosevelt entertained the Long Island 
Bible Society at his home in Oyster Bay and deliv- 
ered an address on ''The Influence of the Bible." It 
is so characteristically compact and so valuable that 
it is repeated here quite fully: 

Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes what a very 
large number of people tend to forget, that the teachings of 
the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole 
civic and social life that it would be literally — I do not 
mean figuratively, I mean literally — impossible for us to 
figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teach- 
ings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards 
by which we now judge both public and private morals; 
all the standards toward which we, with more or less of 
resolution, strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man 
who has by his lifework added to the sum of human achieve- 
ment of which the race is proud, has based his lifework 
largely upon the teachings of the Bible. . . . Among the 
greatest men a disproportionately large number have been 
diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand. 

He refers to Lincoln's study of and indebtedness 
to the Bible, and his industry in reading it until he 
became a "man of one book" : 

Lincoln, sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing 
upon his weary shoulders for four years a greater burden 
than that borne by any other man of the nineteenth century, 
laid down his life for the people whom living he had served 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 307 

so well, built up his entire reading upon his early study of 
the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely; mastered it as 
later he mastered only one or two other books, notably 
Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost "a man 
of one book," who knew that book, and who instinctively 
put into practice what he had been taught therein; and he 
left his life as part of the crowning work of the century 
that has now passed. 

He insists that intellectual training alone is not 
sufficient : 

A man whose intellect has been educated, while at the 
same time his moral education has been neglected, is only 
the more dangerous to the community because of the ex- 
ceptional additional power which he has acquired. ... It is 
a good thing to be clever, to be able and smart, but it is a 
better thing to have the qualities that find their expression 
in the Decalogue and the Golden Rule. It is a good and 
necessary thing to be intelligent; it is a better thing to be 
straight and decent and fearless. 

He declared that the Bible enforces a personal ob- 
ligation which is measured by one's ability; 

You may look through the Bible from cover to cover, and 
nowhere will you find a line that can be construed into an 
apology for the man of brains who sins against the light. 
On the contrary, in the Bible, taking that as a guide, you 
will find that because much has been given you, much will 
be expected from you; and a heavier condemnation is 
visited upon the able man who goes wrong than upon his 
weaker brother who cannot do the harm that the other 
does because it is not in him to do it. 

He then quotes a description of the Bible given by 
Huxley, who describes it as a literary gem, a civilizer, 



308 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

a giver of world visions, an insurance for freedom 
and a teacher of responsibility : 

One of the highest tributes of modern times to the worth 
of the Bible came from the great scientist Huxley, who 
said: "Consider the great historical fact that for three 
centuries the Book has been woven into the life of all that 
is noblest and best in our history, and that it has become 
the national epic of our race; that it is written in the no- 
blest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties 
of mere literary form; and finally that it forbids the veriest 
hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the ex- 
istence of other countries and other civilization and of a 
great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the 
oldest nations in the world. By the study of what other 
book could children be so much humanized and made to 
feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, 
like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval 
between the eternities? The Bible has been the Magna 
Charta of the poor and of the oppressed. Down to modern 
times no State has had a constitution in which the interests 
of the people are so largely taken into account, in which 
the duties, so much more than the privileges, of rulers are 
Insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy 
and Leviticus. Nowhere is the fundamental truth that the 
welfare of the state, in the long run, depends upon the 
righteousness of the citizen so strongly laid down. The 
Bible is the most democratic book in the world. 

Mr. Roosevelt affirms that the Bible aids good 
taste in reading, which aid he opines is greatly 
needed when the level of literary taste was so no- 
ticeably low : 

There is the unceasing influence it exerts on the side of 
good taste, of good literature, of proper sense of proportion, 
of simple and straightforward writing and thinking. This 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 309 

is not a small matter in an age when there is a tendency 
to read much that, even if not actually harmful on moral 
grounds, is yet injurious, because it presents slipshod, 
slovenly thought and work; not the kind of serious thought, 
of serious expression, which we like to see in anything that 
goes into the fiber of our character. 

He pleads for a closer study of a book that will 
spur one to strong endeavor to make the world 
better : 

If we read the Bible aright, we read a book which teaches 
us to go forth and do the work of the Lord; to do the work 
of the Lord in the world as we find it; to try to make things 
better in this world, even if only a little better because we 
have lived in it. . . . We plead for a closer and wider and 
deeper study of the Bible, so that our people may be in 
fact as well as in theory, "doers of the word and not hearers 
only." 

He exhibited real skill in studying and teaching 
the Bible, which will be seen from the outline pre- 
pared with his own hand and appearing herewith. 
(See page 310.) 

It will be interesting to read the verses and see 
how sturdy and stimulating they are as well as alive 
with exhortation. 

The Rev. W. I. Bowman, while pastor of the Meth- 
odist Church at Oyster Bay, had invited Mr. Roose- 
velt to address his brotherhood. He promptly agreed 
to do so and, of course, the church was crowded, as 
was the space outside. The President arrived on 
time and brought his own Bible with him. He read 
as a Scripture lesson 1 Cor. 13, the chapter which 
Henry Drummond used as the basis for his book. 
The Greatest Thing in the World, which deals with 



310 



ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 



ROOSEVELT TALKS 
TO MEN'S SOCIETY 

n- - - I 

CiiristianBrotiierliood Of Oyster 
Bay as His Audience. 

"REAL ESSENCE OF LIFE." 



Two Hundred Gather to Hear Him at the 
Methodist Church— BrlnsluR wlfH Htm 
His Own Bible, the President Drives 
Down from Sasantore Hill— Selecting 
His Texts from Mathew and James, 
He Takes the Words "JiAdRe Not Lest 
Te Be Judged" as the Burden of His 
Address— ProgreAS of Oar Country 
Depends l^pon the Sam of Efforts of In- 
dlvlduaTs Acting by Themselves, He Says 

Otster Bat, N. Y., Aug. 7.— President 
Hooeevelt to-day, in response to an invita- 
tion of k>nEfitaji.dlng, delivered a talk tant- 
mount to a sermon before the Christian 
Brotherhood here, a non-sectarian organi- 
zation of men that meets in the Sunday 
school room of the Methodist -church. 

His subject was "The Real Essence of 
Genuine Christian Life and Character," 
and the text he most dwelt on was "Judge 
not. that ye be not judged." 

The invitation was extended to the Presi- 
dent by the brotherhood several weeks ago 
through the Rev. Charles S. Weightman, 
the chairman of its committee on religous 
services and speakers. It was not until 
9 o'clock Saturday night that the chairman 
and Rev. W. I. Bowman, the minister of the 
Methodist church and president of the 
brotherhood, were notified that the Presi- 
dent would come at 4 o'clock yesterday 
afternoon. 

Although kept a secret as far as possible, 
the news spread' and the usual attendance 
of eeventy-ftye was swelled to 200, which is 
remarkable for Oyster Bay. 



The President drove down Irom Saga- 
more Hill, attended by Secret Service 
Agent Sloane. He had his own Bible with 
him and he selected his texts chiefly from 
Matthew 7 and 2fl and from the epistle of 
James, expounding text after text. He was 
presented by the Rev. W I. Bowman. The 
President's address was as foUowa. 

"Brother Bowman nas spoken of the fact 
that I have had a large experience. I 
think that each one of us who has a large 
experience grows to realize more and more 
that the essentials of experience are aliko 
for all of us. The things that move us 
most are the things of the home, of the 
Church; the intimate relations that knit a 
man to his family, to his close friends; 
that make him try to do bis duty by his 
neighbor, by his God are in their essen- 
tials just the same for one man as for 
Buother, provided the man is in fiood faith 
trying to do his duty. 

"I feel that the progress of our country 
really depends upon the sum of the efforts 
of the indi\-idiialrt acting by themsalves, 
but especially upoa tho sum of the efforts 
of the indi\iduals acting in xTPPiociations 
like this for the betterment of themselves, 
for the betttrment oi tho communities in 
which they dwell. Thero is naver any 
difficulty about the forces of evil being 
organized. Evei^,' time that we get an 
organization of tlie forces that are painfully 
6tri\ing for good, an organization like this, 
we are doing our Tart to offset, and a little 
more than offset, the forces of evil. 

"1 want to read several different texta 
which it seems to me have especial bearing 
upon the work of brotherhoods Uke this— 
upon the spirit in which not only all of us 
who are members of this brotherhood, but 
all of us who strive to be decent Christians 
are" to apply our Chriptianity on weekdays 
as well as on Sundays. The first verses 
I want to read can be found in the seventh 
chapter of Matthew, the first and sixteenth 
.verses. 

"First,' Judge not that ye be not judged.* 
Sixteenth, 'Ye shall know them by tneir 
fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, 
or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree 
bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt 
tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree 
cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a 
corruDt tree bring forth good fruit.' 

" 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' That 
means,, treat each of us his brethren with 
charity. Be not quick to find fault. Above 
all be not quick to jud^e another man who 
according to his light is striving to do his 
dutv as each of us nore hopes he is striving 
to do his. Let us ever remember that we 
have not only divine authority for the 
statement that by our fruits we shall be 
known, but that also it is true that man- 
kind will tend to judge us by our fruits. 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 



311 



"It tB an especially lamentable "Ihing to 
eee ill done by any man who from his aseo- 
oiations with the Church, who from the fact 
that be haa bad the priceless benefits of 
the teachings of the christian religion, 
ehould be expected to take a position of 
leadership In the work for good. 

"The next quotation 1 wish to read to 
you is found in the twenty-fifth chapter of 
Matthew, thirty-seventh to fortieth verses, 
inchicive: 'Then shall the righteous answer 
Him, saying. Lord, when saw we thee a 
hungered, and fed thee, or thirsty and gave 
thee drink. 

" 'When saw we thee a stranger and took 
thee iUj or naked, and clothed thee. 

" 'Or when saw we the sick, or in nrison, 
and. came unto thee. 

"And the King shall answer and say unto 
them, Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of my 
brethren ye have done it unto me." 

"That 18 what this brotherhood means, 
by trying to worship our Creator by acting 
toward his creatures as he would nave us 
act; to try to make our religion a living 
force in our lives; to do unto others as we 
would have them do unto us. 

"The next text I wish to read is found in 
1. Corinthians, xiii. chapter, beginning with 
the first verse 'Though I speak with the 
tongues of man and of angels, and have 
not charity, I am become as sounding brass, 
or a tinkling cymbal.' 

"And though I have the gift of prophecy; 
and understand all mysteries, and all fonowl- 
edge; and though I have all faith so that I 
could remove mountains, and have not 
charity, I am nothing. 

" 'And though I bestow all my goods to 
feed the poor, and though I give my body 
to be burned and have not charity, it 
profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth 
long and is kind, charity envleth not, 
charity vannteth not itself, is not puffed up.* 

* 'And now abldeth faith, hope, oharlty, 
these three, but the greatest of these is 
charity * 

•■LoroacTi of us exercise the largest tole- 
rance for his brother who is trying, though 
in a dilTcrent way, to lead a decent life; 
^ho is (I'ying to do good in his own fashion; 
let each try to show practical sympathy 
T-ith that orotber; not be too oujckto 
criticize, 

, "In Oozing I want to read just a fewr. 
verses from the epistle of James from the' 
first chapter, twenty-seventh verse: 

" 'Pure religion and undefiled before 
God and the father is this. To visit tho 
fatherless and widows in their affliction 
and to keep himself unspotted from the 
world ' " 



"If a man will try to serve God the Father 
by being kindly to the many around him 
who need such kindness and by being 
upright and honest himself, then we have 
the authorfy of the Good Book for saying 
that we are in honor bound to treat him 
as a good Christian and extend the band 
of brotherhood, to him." 

After the sermon the President bad a 
reception at which he shook hands with 
every one present and then asked Mr. Bow- 
man to take him to Mrs. Bowman in the 
parsonage next door to the church, with 
whom he wished to shake hands. He com- 
plimented the Bowman's en the new par- 
sonage just eompleCed. Then the Presi- 
dent drove back to Sagamore Hill about 5:15. 

The President's visitors yesterday were 
William Wilmer and J. B. Bishop of New 
York,.hi^ pereonai friends. 

The President did not go to Christ 
Church, the little Episcopal Church he 
usually attends. His family, however, 
were there. 

The Rev. Homer H. Washbume of Christ 
Oiurch preached a missionary sermon, 
saying that we Americans do not suf- 
ficiently attend to the conversion of the 
heathen. Our immigration laws are such 
that they do not peiroit sufficient numbers 
of heathen to come in and so we miss the 
chance of converting them. The Rev 
Mr. Washbume also prayed for a lasting 
peace. 



312 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

love. It opens with, 'Though I speak with the 
tongues of men and angels and have not charity 
[love], I am become as sounding brass or as a tink- 
ling cymbal." It ends with, ''And now abideth faith, 
hope, charity [love], these three, and the greatest of 
these is charity [love]." He then read and com- 
mented on each passage of Scripture in the order of 
the outline. The New York Sun reported the address 
at the time (see pages 310 and 311). 

Calvin B. Velsor, a local citizen, asked President 
Roosevelt for the "outline," and he signed it and 
presented it to Mr. Velsor, who loaned outline (see 
p. 310) and the above newspaper clipping to the 
writer. 

In 1911 Mr. Roosevelt, who had just returned from 
Africa, agreed to give the Earl Lectures delivered 
under the auspices of the Pacific Theological Semi- 
nary, located at Berkeley, California. The founda- 
tion declares that the lectures are to "aid in securing 
at the University of California the presentation of 
Christian truth." They were delivered in the Greek 
Theater, which seats many thousands, while other 
thousands stood on the hillsides. The American 
Bible Society, which was celebrating the Tercente- 
nary of the King James Version, requested Mr. 
Roosevelt to take the Bible as the subject for one of 
the five lectures. He agreed and his third lecture 
was titled, "The Bible and the Life of the People." 
The whole course of lectures was called Realizable 
Ideals and is published under that title by Whitaker 
& Ray-Wiggin Co., San Francisco. Some material 
in the lecture was used in the Long Island address 






^ 









/ 



MR. ROOSEVELT'S OUTLINE OF A TALK GIVEN TO 
A BIBLE CLASS IN OYSTER BAY. 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 3lS 

on the Bible just reported and hence those sections 
are not repeated here. He first emphasizes the fact 
that the Bible had preserved our fathers from a 
moral decline and had spurred them for and pre- 
served our purpose in making ethical advances: 

I have come here to-day, in the course of a series of 
lectures upon applied ethics, upon realizable ideals, to 
speak of the book to which our people owe infinitely the 
greater part of their store of ethics, infinitely the greater 
part of their knowledge of how to apply that store to the 
needs of our everyday life. 

The Vulgate version gave the Bible in Latin, the tongue 
of learning of the peoples of the West at a time when the 
old classic civilization of Greece and Rome had first crum- 
bled to rottenness and had then been overwhelmed by the 
barbarian sea. In the wreck of the Old World, Christianity 
was all that the survivors had to cling to; and the Latin 
version of the Bible put it at their disposal. 

He affirms that the Bible should be in every home : 

The great debt of the English-speaking peoples every- 
where is to the translation of the Bible that we all know — 
I trust I can say, all here know — in our own homes, the 
Bible as it was put forth in English three centuries ago. 
No other book of any kind ever written in English — perhaps 
no other book ever written in any other tongue — has ever 
so affected the whole life of a people as this authorized 
(King James) version of the Scriptures has affected the 
life of the English-speaking peoples. 

The man who substitutes the Sunday newspaper 
for the Bible classifies himself among those with a 
low type of intelligence: 

What could interest men who find the Bible dull? The 
Sunday newspaper? Think of the difference there must be 



314 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

in the mental make-up of the man whose chief reading in- 
cluded the one, as compared with the man whose chief 
reading is represented by the other — the vulgarity, the 
shallowness, the inability to keep the mind fixed on any 
serious subject, which is implied in the mind of any man 
who cannot read the Bible and yet can take pleasure in 
reading only literature of the type of the colored supplement 
of the Sunday paper! Now I am not speaking against the 
colored supplement of any paper in its place; but as a 
substitute for serious reading of the great Book it repre- 
sents a type of mind which it is gross flattery merely to 
call shallow. 

It fits one to count in life : "I make my appeal not 
only to professing Christians/' but to every man who 

faces life with the real desire not only to get out of it what 
is best but to do his part in everything that tells for the 
ennobling and uplifting of humanity. 

The world needs the spiritual stimulus of the 
"Book" ; 

I am making a plea, not only for the training of the mind, 
but for the moral and spiritual training of the home and 
the church, and moral and spiritual training that has always 
been in, and has ever accompanied, the study of the book 
which in almost every civilized tongue, and in many an 
uncivilized, can be described as the Book with the certainty 
of having the description understood by all listeners. 

He gives the following incident from foreign mis- 
sions to illustrate the transforming power of Bible 
truth : 

A year and a quarter ago I was passing on foot through 
the native kingdom of Uganda in Central Africa. Uganda 
is the most highly developed of the pure Negro states in 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 315 

Africa. It is the state which has given the richest return 
for missionary labor. It now contains some half million of 
Christians, the direction of the government being in the 
hands of those Christians. I was interested to find that 
in their victorious fight against, in the first place, heathen- 
dom, and in the next place, Moslemism, the native Catho- 
lics and Protestants had taken as their symbol "the Book," 
sinking all minor differences among themselves, and com- 
ing together on the common ground of their common belief 
in "the Book" that was the most precious gift the white 
man had brought to them. 

Mere reading of ^'the Book" is not sufficient : 

I would rather not see a man study it at all than have him 
read it as a fetish on Sunday and disregard its teachings 
on all other days of the week. 

Mr. Koosevelt closes his wonderful lecture with 
the declaration that true helpfulness can only come 
from following the example of Christ: 

Our success in striving to help our fellow men and there- 
fore to help ourselves, depends largely upon our success as 
we strive, with whatever shortcomings, with whatever fail- 
ures, to lead our lives in accordance with the great ethical 
principles laid down in the life of Christ and in the New 
Testament writings which seek to expound and apply his 
teachings. 

As shown in other places, Mr. Koosevelt began to 
memorize the Bible when he was three years of age 
and helped teach his own children to memorize in 
the same way. Mrs. Roosevelt told a friend that he 
carried the Bible so thoroughly in his mind that he 
could quote large sections of it. 



316 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Julian Ralph once asked Mr. Roosevelt, "What 
did you expect to be or dream of being when you were 
a boy?" And he replied, quoting Scripture; 

I do not recollect that I dreamed at all or planned at all. 
I simply obeyed the injunction, "Whatever thy hand findeth 
to do, do with all thy might," and so I took up what came 
along as it came. Since then I have gone on Lincoln's motto, 
"Do the best; if not, then the best possible." 

In his Pacific Theological Lectures, Mr. Roosevelt 
after quoting a sentence from Huxley giving a high 
estimate of the value of training children in Bible 
knowledge, pauses, and before continuing with Hux- 
ley's further statement says: 

I am quoting not a professed Christian, but a scientific 
man whose scientific judgment is thus expressed as to the 
value of biblical training for the young. 

In his Long Island lecture he severely condemns 
the practice in some homes of punishing children by 
compelling them to commit long passages of Scrip- 
ture such as sections of Isaiah where he "learns it 
as a disagreeable task and in his mind that splendid 
and lofty poem and prophecy is forever afterward 
associated with an uncomfortable feeling of dis- 
grace." Continuing, he says: "You can devise no 
surer method of making a child revolt against all the 
wonderful beauty and truth of Holy Writ." 

He also forewarns adults to be careful lest they 
give children false ideas about the Bible phrases. 
He illustrates it by the story of a little grandson of 
the Rev. Dr. Adams, who was very much afraid of 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 317 

entering his grandfather's church when it was emp- 
tied of people. On questioning him they found, said 
Mr. Roosevelt, that he had heard his grandfather 
repeat the text^ "The zeal of thy house hath eaten me 
up,'' and he was sure that "zeal" was some kind of a 
man-eating beast that dwelt in churches and would 
catch him if unprotected. 

He took time to tell his own children Bible stories 
and encouraged them to use their own imagination 
after they understood the facts, for he declares : "I 
do not think that it is ordinarily necessary to ex- 
plain the simple and beautiful stories of the Bible; 
children understand readily the lessons taught 
therein." 

In a letter to Miss Carow he related an incident 
when he had told the children the story of Joseph. 
They immediately recognized that it was both foolish 
and contrary to the instruction thej had received for 
Joseph to irritate his brothers by telling his egotistic 
dreams. They had been reading the adventures of 
the Gollywogs, and Kermit, drawing an analogy, 
commented about Joseph, "Well, I guess he was 
simple, like Jane in the Gollywogs," and Ethel 
nodded gravely in confirmation. 

Nothing will uncover the meaning of a section of 
Scripture so certainly as an effort to teach it to 
others. Mr. Roosevelt doubtless found that out and 
so he writes Ethel : 

I am really pleased that you are going to teach Sunday 
school. I think I told you that I taught it for seven years, 
most of the time in a mission class, my pupils being of a 
kind which furnished me plenty of vigorous excitement. 



318 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

^^Bill" Sewall told me that when Mr. Roosevelt was 
a young lad he was an earnest Bible student, and 
said: 

When Mr. Roosevelt was only eigliteen and came to my 
Maine camp he would go off by himself on Sunday to an 
isolated point and take his Bible so that he could read it 
without anyone bothering him. Because of this custom of 
Mr. Roosevelt, his fellow campers afterward called that 
spot "Bible Point." He had a Bible on the ranch in the 
early days and read it regularly. He was an extensive 
reader of the Bible. I guess he found it, as I did, a source 
of real common sense. He would quote it frequently in con- 
versation and always to fit the case in point. He read the 
Bible to find the right way and then how to do it. Some 
folks read it to find an easier way into heaven — "to climb 
up some other way." He always carried a Bible or Testa- 
ment with him in the early days. While on the ranch he 
had a Bible and frequently carried it with him and read it 
regularly. 

Both Mr. Leary and Mr. O'Laughlin recall hearing 
Mr. Roosevelt heartily commend the Gideons for 
putting the Bible in the hotels, and Mr. Leary saw 
him pick up one in his room, thus placed, and read 
it with close interest. Mr. McGrath said, "Mr. Roose- 
velt frequently declared that the Bible was more in- 
teresting than any book of fiction ever written, and 
he appeared to enjoy reading it as well." 

Wade Ellis, whom President Roosevelt selected to 
break up the greedy "Trusts," told the writer: 

One day I mentioned "Naaman" in one of our conferences. 
Mr. Roosevelt immediately said, "Oh, he was the man who 
went to Israel to get help from their religion and a servant 
tried afterward to capitalize Naaman's gratitude to collect 



HIS OPlNlOIvf OF THE BIBLE 319 

graft." He was the only man there who recognized Naa- 
man. I had specialized for years in Bible study but could 
never make a reference he did not understand. 

In answering a request as to what books a states- 
man should read, he once said : "Poetry and novels, 
but not these alone. If he cannot enjoy the Hebrew 
prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be 
sorry." 

Dr. Lambert, describing the root and depth of Mr. 
Roosevelt's interest in the Bible, said to me : 

Mr. Roosevelt read the Old Testament as real history, 
He saw and felt the battles as genuine contests and recog- 
nized the fact that righteousness forearmed the successful 
The plagues described were not fictional, for numerous simi 
lar ones have occurred in history. He always found in 
tense personal interest in the Bible because he was looking 
for some direction or truth to employ. Things other men 
would pass by he would see. He was greatly attracted by a 
study of the prophets in late years because he felt it his 
call to arouse his own nation to take up her duties in the 
war and along other righteous lines. He was burdened 
with his "message" even as were the prophets of old. 

Mr. Roosevelt based his "preparedness" appeal on 
Ezekiel thirty-three. He felt it to be his duty to cry 
out against the nation's sloth and selfishness if he 
avoided the guilt of a prophet who sees danger but 
will not speak the warning. "But if the watchman 
see the sword come and blow not the trumpet, . . . 
his blood will I require at the watchman's hands'^ 
(Ezek. 33. 6). In speaking of his contest with dis- 
honest politicians in his AiitoMography, he refers 
to the fact that the "creed of mere materialism" 



320 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

prevalent in American politics and business for 
thirty years after the Civil War led many to do 
things for which they ^'deserve blame and condemna- 
tion" — though done in accord with "prevailing po- 
litical and commercial morality." But if they sin- 
cerely change, he declares, and strive for better 
things, they should be encouraged. He continues : 

So long as they work for evil, smite them with the sword 
of the Lord and of Gideon! When they change and show 
their faith by their works, remember the words of Ezekiel: 
"If the wicked will turn from all the sins he has committed, 
... he shall not die." 

Mr. Thayer vividly describes the scene at the 
Chicago Convention when Mr. Roosevelt was de- 
feated for the nomination. His supporters gathered 
in the Auditorium and gave vent to their bitter dis- 
appointment and their steadfast loyalty to him. 
Mr. Roosevelt came into the meeting and poured 
himself out in a "torrential speech" which would 
arouse their passions instead of appeal to their 
minds, says Mr. Thayer, and continues, "But it fitly 
symbolized the situation. He, the dauntless leader, 
stood there, the soul of sincerity and courage, im- 
pressing upon them all that they were engaged in a 
most solemn cause." Then he ended the challenge 
with the words, "We stand at Armageddon and we 
battle for the Lord." This Scripture reference is 
found in Revelation, and pictures the forces of 
righteousness standing against the forces of evil. It 
carried as could no other Bible phrase the exact 
situation as Mr. Roosevelt sensed and described it. 







. I 5 









4 




HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 321 

It put the audience into an atmosphere above ma- 
terialism and prepared them as warriors in their 
contest to sing, ^^Onward, Christian Soldiers." 
Mr. Thompson said to me: 

Mr. Roosevelt was afraid to use the Scriptures in the Old 
Party days, lest the leaders misunderstand and suspect him 
of hypocrisy, but when the spirituality of men was brought 
to the surface by the sacrifices and moral issues of the Pro- 
gressive contest, then the long-treasured Scripture came to 
the surface and caught a return feeling from the other 
spiritually minded men. 

As before shown, Mr. Roosevelt was constantly 
repeating Micah 6. 8 as containing his creed. The 
New York Bible Society asked Mr. Roosevelt to write 
a message to be put into the copies of the New Testa- 
ment which were presented to the soldier boys go- 
ing to the front. For this purpose he selected his 
favorite Scripture and applied it as follows : 

The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in 
Micah's verse: "What more doth the Lord require of thee 
than to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God." 

Do justice; and therefore fight valiantly against the 
armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this 
crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub on this 
earth. 

Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the wounded; 
treat every woman as if she was your sister; care for the 
little children, and be tender with the old and helpless. 

Walk humbly; you will do so if you study the life and 
teachings of the Saviour. 

May the God of Justice and Mercy have you in His 

keeping. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
June 5, 1917. 



322 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Such an interpretation of this scripture could only 
be possible to one who had the spirit of Him who 
lives in the Book and uncovers its truth to his dis- 
ciples. 

He told Tammany when he ran for Governor that 
if elected he would run the State on the Ten Com- 
mandments. He styles the Bible in one of his Cali- 
fornia lectures "as the book which has been for cen- 
turies the great guide to righteousness and clean 
living." 

Mr. James Morgan, one of his biographers, wrote 
me: "I do not know of any other public man who 
has made so much use of the Bible texts and exam- 
ples. He evidenced a wide acquaintance with it." 

The needs of the poor and neglected always moved 
him deeply. His own ancestors came over as emi- 
grants, and the steamer decks crowded with these 
lonely people would appeal much to him. The Rev. 
E. Robb Zaring, D.D., the editor of the Northwestern 
Christian Advocate, gave me the following incident : 

When Dr. Len F. Broughton, a noted Baptist minister, 
returned from England, he asked the purser of the ship if 
he could not hold a service for the steerage passengers. 
The purser hesitated hut finally agreed. After it was over, 
Dr. Broughton called on the purser, and the latter, after 
declaring he had been seventeen years a purser on the 
seas, said that this was only the second time he had granted 
a request for a service in the steerage. He said: "The other 
time it was not a minister but a layman who made the re- 
quest." When the appointed time came the layman took his 
own Bible, read several passages from Holy Writ, prayed 
in three languages, and then spoke to them of America and 
gave them some seasonable advice, as to their future 



HIS OPINION OF THE BIBLE 323 

careers in this country. Who was the layman? He had 
once been President of the United States— Theodore Roose- 
velt. 

The Great Teacher said, "Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word of God." That as- 
sertion has been too much muddied by mysticism. 
It is literally true. Man has a spiritual nature and 
he needs to keep it cultivated and alert if he enjoys 
a full life. He can only keep his sense of God's near- 
ness very real and his own mission clear as he does 
his daily tasks when he worships in a genuine way. 
The Bible will help him to do that by delineating a 
God of love and understanding — by outlining ideals, 
by bringing to him dependable reassurances, ex- 
hortations, and promises and always in due season. 
The Bible is fine literature, but it is something more, 
and it will demonstrate that something more "to 
everyone who reads it with a teachable and honest 
heart.'' It does indeed contain the "bread of life." 



CHAPTER XVI 
DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 

"Every man who is a Christian at all should join some 
church organization." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be 
saved. — Acts 2. 47. 

RELIGION was as natural to Mr. Roosevelt 
as breathing. It blended with his whole life 
as color does with the rose. He did not need 
to constantly proclaim its presence any more than 
he did his sturdy health. And yet he recognized that 
it made requirements as certain as did his alert 
brain. 

He exhibited the presence of religion in his life 
in deed and declaration as he did his thought in 
spoken and written word. But he also just as cer- 
tainly gave religion credit for early inspiration and 
direction as he did Harvard for helping him prepare 
for his lifework. When necessary and opportune 
Mr. Roosevelt would as naturally announce himself 
to be a Christian as he would that he was a loyal 
American. He was not satisfied merely to give evi- 
dence that he was an American by a consistent life, 
but he frequently and publicly proclaimed it. But 
even that was not sufficient ; he further affirmed it by 
joining organizations known to stand for pure Amer- 

324 



DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 325 

icanism and then added a share of his talents to make 
those organizations successful in spreading Amer- 
ican doctrines. Could he be less consistent with his 
religion? No, and therefore he announced himself 
a Christian by joining the church as the institution 
standing for the Christian religion and organized to 
spread it in all the world. He did not wait for an 
opportune time, but facing it as a duty he acted. 

The writer visited the Rev. Dr. J. M. Ludlow, a re- 
tired minister living at East Orange, New Jersey, 
and he told the story of receiving Mr. Roosevelt into 
church membership: 

Theodore came to see me quite frequently as a boy. He 
was delicate-looking but very plucky and full of grit. The 
traits shown in his manhood were evident as a boy. He 
stuttered some when talking. When about sixteen years of 
age he came into my study looking a little more serious 
than usual and said that he wanted to talk with me about 
a personal matter. He proceeded: "You know how care- 
fully I have been instructed in the Bible and in Christian 
doctrine in my home by my father and devout aunt and 
mother. I believe in God and my Saviour and in the 
teachings of the Bible as you preach them and as taught 
in my home. When a man believes a thing is it not his duty 
to say so? If I joined the church, wouldn't that be the best 
way to say to the world that I believed in God?" He was 
always like that — to see his duty was to do it. He then 
asked me if he would be allowed to join the church. I told 
him he would be very welcome. My "Board" elected him 
to membership on my approval, and a few days afterward 
I received him into Saint Nicholas Dutch Reformed Church, 
of which I was then pastor. 

It will be seen that he wanted to announce his 
faith in God to the world and he decided that the 



326 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

only fair and full way to do that was to join the 
church. His name was never removed from the 
records of that church, located on Fifth Avenue at 
Forty-eighth Street. 

He gladly aligned himself with church people when 
he said to Dr. Iglehart, who had appealed to him on 
a moral issue : 

You know full well that on moral questions the church 
people and I are in perfect agreement. Why? I am one of 
the church people myself, and stand, work and fight for the 
things which they represent. Our personal friendship is 
the outgrowth of our mutual support of the things for 
which the church stands (Iglehart, p. 139). 

William Allen White wrote me: "I have heard 
him express a high value upon the churches of our 
country." Theodore Jr. explained to me : 

My father had great respect for and confidence in the 
church. He was, however, little interested in mere dogma, 
but earnestly lent advocacy when the church had an ethical 
point at issue. 

The New York Sun quoted Mr. Roosevelt on his 
return from South America as expressing his con- 
viction that Roman Catholic workers and churches 
should be increased there : 

A very short experience of communities where there is 
no church ought to convince the most heterodox of the abso- 
lute need of a church. I earnestly wish that there could be 
such an increase in the personnel and equipment of the 
Catholic Church in South America as to permit the estab- 
lishment of one good and earnest priest in every village or 
little community in the far interior. 



DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 327 

He also urged the advantage not only to the peo- 
ple but to the Roman Catholic Church itself of a 
multiplication of Protestant institutions. There 
ought to 

be a marked extension and development of the native 
Protestant churches, such as I saw established here and 
there in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentine, and of the Young 
Men's Christian Associations. . . . Not only is the establish- 
ment of such churches a good thing for the body politic as 
a whole, but a good thing for the Catholic Church itself; 
for their presence is a constant spur to activity and clean 
and honorable conduct and a constant reflection on sloth 
and moral laxity. 

Discussing the effect of a church on a community, 
he admits that mere "religious formalism" has been 
an enemy to religion from the day of the Pharisees 
until the present day and then says : 

Nevertheless, in this actual world a churchless com- 
munity, a community where men have abandoned and 
scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community 
on the rapid down grade. 

He affirms that it is only the exceptional family or 
individual who reaches high and full ethical develop- 
ment without the help of the church. But hear him 
as he writes in The Ladies' Home Journal : 

It is perfectly true that occasional individuals or families 
may have nothing to do with the church or with religious 
practices and observances and yet maintain the highest 
standard of spirituality and of ethical obligation. But 
this does not affect the case in the world as it now is, any 
more than that exceptional men and women under excep- 
tional conditions have disregarded the marriage tie without 



328 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

moral harm to themselves interferes with the larger fact 
that such disregard, if at all common, means the complete 
moral disintegration of the body politic. 

In the West he noticed that a pioneer section dis- 
integrated if a church was not erected : 

In the pioneer days of the West we found it an unfailing 
rule that after a community had existed for a certain length 
of time either a church was built or else the community 
began to go downhill. 

When church membership and work has decreased 
in the older sections of the country they have gone 
backward : 

In these old communities in the Eastern States which 
have gone backward it is noticeable that the retrogression 
has been both marked and accentuated by a rapid decline 
in church membership and work. . . . This has occurred 
not only in the "poor white" sections of the South, but in 
the small hamlets of the "abandoned farm" regions of New 
England and New York. As the people grow slack and dis- 
pirited they slip from all effective interest in church ac- 
tivities. 

But when religious organizations are strengthened 
such communities revive: 

The building up of a strong country church or Young 
Men's Christian Association in such a community often has 
an astonishing effect in putting such a virile life into them 
that their moral betterment stimulates a marked physical 
betterment in their homes and farms. 

Mr. Hagedorn, the secretary of the Roosevelt Me- 
morial Association and an extensive editor of Mr. 




THE OYSTER BAY HOME (CHRIST) 
CHURCH. 

1. The exterior among the trees. 

2. The Interior — the Communion Altar. 

3. The Fourth Seat from the rear— the 200th 

Anniversary bronze tablet. 



DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 329 

Roosevelt's writings, wrote me : ^'Scattered through 
his speeches and his writings are frequent references 
to the absolute need of a vigorous religious life in 
every community." 

Mr. Roosevelt gave evidence of his convictions in- 
the review of a book written by Charles O. Gill and 
Gilford Pinchot on The Country Church in The Out- 
look for July 19, 1913. He quotes much from the 
illustrations in the book showing the beneficial ef- 
fects of the church on a community. Here is his 
quotation from the book, which is describing a cer- 
tain country section : 

After the church was established the public property of 
the town, once a source of graft and demoralization, be- 
came a puhlic asset. ... In the decade and a half which 
has elapsed since the church began its work boys and girls 
of a new type have been brought up. The reputation of 
the village has been changed from bad to good, the public 
order has greatly improved, and the growth of the place as 
a summer resort has begun. 

Then Mr. Roosevelt asserts that no community can 
prosper without the church : 

Even men who are not professedly religious must, if they 
are frank, admit that no community permanently prospers, 
either morally or materially, unless the church is a real 
and vital element in its community life. 

In urging the church to give attention to social 
needs he guards the request by admitting that this, 
however, will not be sufficient: 

This does not mean that social life should be divorced 
from the religious life; Dr. Josiah Strong has pointed out 



330 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

that to neglect the spiritual is an even greater blunder 
than to neglect the physical factor in life. 

The Methodist General Conference of six hundred 
or seven hundred delegates journeyed from Balti- 
more, where it was in session, to participate in the 
laying of a cornerstone for its American University, 
and President Roosevelt in addressing them paid 
high tribute to the ^'energy" of the Methodist Church 
in the early days of the republic and its "spiritual" 
influence : 

Methodism in America entered on its period of rapid 
growth just about the time of Washington's first Presi- 
dency. Its essential democracy, its fiery and restless energy 
of spirit, and the wide play that it gave to individual in- 
itiative, all tended to make it peculiarly congenial to a 
hardy and virile folk, democratic to the core, prizing in- 
dividual independence above all earthly possessions, and 
engaged in the rough and stern work of conquering a con- 
tinent. 

He then pays high praise to the "circuit riders" : 

The whole country is under a debt of gratitude to the 
Methodist circuit-riders, the Methodist pioneer preachers, 
whose movement westward kept pace with the movement 
of the frontier, who shared all the hardships in the life of 
the frontiersman, while at the same time ministering to 
that frontiersman's spiritual needs, and seeing that his 
pressing material cares and the hard and grinding poverty 
of his life did not wholly extinguish the divine fire within 
his soul (The Christian Advocate, January 16, 1919). 

D. D. Thompson sent President Roosevelt his own 
Life of John Wesley and called his attention to the 



DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 331 

relation which Methodism sustained to the labor 
problem in England and America. In replying he 
noted the fine social effect of the church on the lo- 
cality : 

The beautiful books have come. Mrs. Roosevelt appreci- 
ates them just as much as I do. I shall be particularly in- 
terested in what you say in Wesley's Life in reference to 
the labor problems and the churches. As you know, I 
have felt very strongly that we needed a well-nigh revo- 
lutionary change in our methods of church work among the 
laboring people, especially in the great cities. I can say 
with perfect truthfulness that wherever we have a thor- 
oughly flourishing Methodist congregation, where the bulk 
of the members are artisans and mechanics, I regard the 
social and industrial outlook for that particular locality 
as good, just as I feel that a flourishing Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association movement in connection with a particular 
railroad opens vistas of hopefulness for that railroad. 

He would, in no circumstances, limit this state- 
ment of fact to any one denomination, but merely 
used this occasion to pay a general tribute to the 
churches, for in another place he similarly praises 
the Presbyterian Church. 

At another time the President wrote Dr. Thomp- 
son that Americans were unusually interested in the 
life of Wesley, since "the great church which Wesley 
founded" has reached its largest development here 
and its existence coincides with the existence of ^^our 
national life." Then he says : 

The Methodist congregations played a peculiar part In 
the pioneer history of our country, and it would be hard to 
over-estimate what we owe to the early circuit-riders, no 
less than to their successors. 



332 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

His appreciation of the church's influence in laying 
the foundation for an enduring liberty is evidenced 
very early in life by his reference to the contention 
of the independent churches in Cromwell's time. He 
was confident that when the local churches insisted 
on their intrinsic rights to decide about their own 
doctrines they became ''forerunners in the movement 
that has culminated in our modern political and re- 
ligious liberty." 

Mr. Roosevelt's pastor at Oyster Bay described 
Mr. Roosevelt's rare consideration for the preacher 
to whom he listened every Sunday. He wrote in The 
Churchman : 

There were friends who said in warning, "You will find 
him a hard man to preach to; he is so positive in his con- 
victions." Would that preachers had always so kindly a 
critic as he — one who could follow what they say, commend 
utterances that were worth while, and suggest books to 
read if the views were divergent. This criticism, always 
in private, might take the form, "I liked that expression; 
may I use it?" or "While I did not agree with you, I en- 
joyed your presentation. But have you read such and such 
a book? It is very illuminating."^ 

He followed the injunction of his favorite text 
(Micah 6. 8) and endeavored even in his worship to 
''walk humbly with God," for in Washington he at- 
tended a humble Dutch Reformed church on a side 
street and a small, unpretentious Episcopal church 
in Oyster Bay. 

President Roosevelt's Washington pastor had an 
eight-year-old boy named John, and he and the boy 

'Reprinted from The Churchman. 



DID HE JOIN THE CHUKCH? 333 

were great friends. He insisted to the boy's mother 
— for the pastor's pew was just in front of him — "It's 
half my care in church to take care of Johnnie. I 
don't know what he would do if I did not look out for 
him." On his return from Oyster Bay Johnnie once 
asked the President about his boys : "I don't know," 
said Mr. Koosevelt, "how they are, for when I last 
saw them they were eating green apples." 

Dr. Iglehart went down to Washington for a con- 
ference on Sunday. Secretary Loeb told him that 
the President would be found in church unless an 
ankle recently sprained and pretty "severe" would 
keep him at home. The President, however, appeared 
in due time, "throwing his arms and pushing and 
pulling his wounded leg with a perceptible limp at a 
rapid gait." Dr. Iglehart continues : 

The ritual service, which was almost as elaborate as that 
of the Episcopal Church, was participated in scrupulously 
by the President, who stood, sat, and responded at the 
proper time. He joined heartily in the singing, which was 
led by a precentor and organist without a choir. He was 
the best listener I saw in the house. The weather was in- 
tensely hot, the mercury at ninety-five, and he kept a large 
palm-leaf fan in his right hand going to the limit of its 
capacity every minute of the service. 

The pastor being absent on this particular Sunday 
the secretary of the Missionary Society preached a 
helpful but not brilliant sermon, Dr. Iglehart tells 
us, and : 

I walked away with him and commenced to tell him some- 
thing when he halted me and said, "Let me say something 
first and then you can go on with your story." He said, "The 



334 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

services this morning were enjoyable. The sermon was 
good and I agreed with him in the points he made that the 
home is the chief foundation stone of the republic and the 
hope of the church. . . . After a week on perplexing prob- 
lems and in heated contests, it does so rest my soul to come 
into the house of the Lord and worship and to sing and 
mean it, the hymn, 'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,' 
and to know that he is my Father, and takes me into his life 
and plans. I am sure I get a wisdom not my own and a 
superhuman strength in fighting the moral evils I am called 
on to confront." 

Mr. Roosevelt always partook of the sacred sym- 
bols of bread and wine in the communion service. 
When he wrote The Great Adventure, which title 
refers to death, he recorded his church habits as in- 
cluding this observance : 

When I was Governor of New York I was a member of 
the same Dutch Reformed Church to which two and a half 
centuries earlier Governor Peter Stuyvesant had belonged; 
and we sat at communion at a long table in the aisle just as 
he and his associates had done (The Great Adventure, 
p. 48). 

The Oyster Bay rector gives us a very impressive 
vision of Quentin kneeling at the communion table 
just before his departure to France. The news of 
Quentin's death reached his home on Saturday. At 
eight o'clock on Sunday a service was held for the 
sole purpose of administering the sacred elements. 
And though Mr. Roosevelt did not often attend this 
special service, on the Sunday following his great 
sorrow he came to the eight o'clock service to seek 
comfort from fellowship with the Man of Sorrows. 
The rector describes the scene in The Churchman : 



DID HE JOIN THE CHUKCH? 335 

One recalls that Sunday morning before Quentin sailed, 
how he came to church for his last communion. We felt 
it would be the last. We talked otherwise. Then came the 
letter from abroad in which was written, "I have just been 
to service in Notre Dame Cathedral. It was fine. But I 
would rather have been in Christ Church." And then came 
the cable message, and early next morning, when so many 
would have stayed away, the parents drew near to the same 
altar rail. There were no dry eyes, and the words could 
scarcely be spoken, but their force was there: "Preserve 
thy body and soul unto everlasting life." This time also 
it was a last communion, but we did not know it.* 

It was the last time Mr. Koosevelt partook of the 
sacred elements before his death. 

He did not attend church listlessly but entered 
into the service heartily and listened to the sermon 
closely. He literally worshiped ^^in spirit and in 
truth." As Mr. McLaughlin said to me : "He would 
use his wonderful power of concentration even in a 
church and so drive everything else but worship out 
of his mind." 

The Rev. Dr. Ludlow related an incident to me 
which illustrated his religious concentration: 

As a boy he paid the closest attention during the whole 
worship period. He so completely appropriated the service 
that in a book which I wrote and dedicated to him I in- 
scribed the words: "To the boy in the pew who always 
worked out what he heard." 

He respected the position of the "pastor" and gave 
him due recognition, as shown by Dr. Iglehart, who 
wrote : 



iReprinted from The Churchman. 



336 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

When General Baden-Powell was in this country in the 

interest of the Boy Scout movement, there was an informal 
luncheon at Sagamore Hill, at which the General and some 
men prominent in the movement were present. The rector, 
was invited to meet them. He was introduced as "my 
pastor" (Iglehart, p. 287). 

He rarely had an important conference in Wash- 
ington without having the ministry represented. He 
had high appreciation for the pastor's character. 

In depicting the benefits of church attendance, he 
says: 

Unless he is very unfortunate he will hear a sermon by a 
good man, who with his good wife is engaged all the week 
long in a series of wearing and humdrum tasks for making 
hard lives a little easier; and both this man and his wife 
are in the vast majority of cases showing much self-denial 
and doing much for humble folks of whom few others think, 
and keeping up a brave show on narrow means (Ladies' 
Home Journal, October, 1917). 

Mr. Leary informed me that Mr. Roosevelt greatly 
deplored the small salaries paid clergymen: 

Several times in my hearing he severely criticized the 
church for paying ministers such small salaries. He in- 
sisted that it was an economic problem and that elemental 
justice required better consideration for them. He had a 
great many preacher friends. He always had contempt for 
the fashionable, easy-going type who appealed largely to 
neurotic women. He thought that such types were usually 
overpaid while those who did the real work were underpaid. 

In his review of ''The Country Church" already 
referred to, in discussing the failure of churches be- 
cause of poorly equipped ministers, he says : "You 



DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 337 

cannot expect good men in the ministry until the 
ministry offers a reasonable living for the minister 
and his family." 

In the midst of his campaigning for Judge Hughes 
the writer and two minister friends were driving 
in the vicinity of Oyster Bay and we decided to pay 
our respects to Mr. Roosevelt, with a call. His sec- 
retary greeted us at the door to say : 

The Colonel is very sorry that he cannot see you but he 
is in the midst of dictating a campaign speech to be re- 
leased to the newspapers. It must go in to New York on an 
early mail. He feels sure you will understand. 

We accepted the situation and, starting to leave, 
said : 'Tlease tell the Colonel that three ministers 
came to pay their respects and wish him well." He 
overheard the word "ministers" and bounded out of 
his office and with characteristic greeting explained : 
"I did not know that my callers were clergymen. 
I could not allow a minister to leave my doorstep 
without seeing him for at least a moment." Then 
he explained the unusual task on him at that mo- 
ment and talked politics rapidly for a brief period 
and left us so graciously that we went back to our 
work with a higher vision of our calling. 

When the war was on he was flooded with invita- 
tions to speak. He was not in sturdy health ; he was 
writing constantly and interviewing scores. The 
above-mentioned trio of ministers called at his city 
office and invited him to address a large group of city 
pastors. This appealed to him, for he said : 

I want to speak to these clergymen, for they will pass 



338 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

the message on to others and spread the fire, as can no 
other group of men. I have just refused to speak at a lay- 
man's banquet for a Presbyterian minister friend of twenty- 
five years' standing. If he will accept the situation and not 
feel that I have slighted him, I will do it. You must, how- 
ever, first get his consent. 

We did so, and though the clergyman agreed he yet 
wrote Mr. Roosevelt a complaining letter, which 
caused him to immediately withdraw his acceptance 
of our invitation. He would not grieve his old-time 
minister friend. Later when this minister better 
understood the situation he heartily withdrew his 
complaint and Mr. Roosevelt sidetracked other en- 
gagements and gave a confidential but very remark- 
able address to five hundred city pastors. Few of 
them will ever forget the esteem and confidence ex- 
hibited in it, both by word and bearing. 

In his Autohiography he expresses high praise for 
the chaplain of the Rough Rider Regiment, who he 
insisted was an ideal man for the position, for he 
never "spared himself" as he visited the "sick and 
wounded" and cheered everyone with his ministra- 
tions. 

At another time while making an address he 
pointed to the chaplain and insisted that he was 
among the finest citizens of the land, for "he is a 
Methodist preacher of the old circuit rider stock," 
sturdy and courageous. He further explained that 
the chaplain was in the war since "his people had 
been in all our wars before him," and he had there- 
fore gone in as a natural consequence. 

He then describes the chaplain's courage as he sits 



DID HE JOIN THE CHURCH? 339 

in the "bomb proof" with shrapnel bursting over his 
head, calmly breaking coffee beans for his cup of 
coffee with the butt of his revolver. 

In speaking at an anniversary meeting of the 
American Tract Society, which was scattering re- 
ligious truth in printed form everywhere, he said: 
"One of the best things done by this society, and by 
kindred religious and benevolent societies, is supply- 
ing in our American life of to-day the proper ideals." 
Continuing, he said that such service could not be 
bought with money : 

This is the spirit that lies behind this society, and all 
kindred societies; and we owe to this society all the help 
we can afford to give, for it is itself giving to our people 
a service beyond price, a service of love, a service which no 
money could buy. 

He welcomed the day when the various denomina- 
tions would work together more closely, and rejoiced 
that they were learning "that they can best serve 
their God by serving their fellow men, and best serve 
their fellow men, not hy wrangling among them- 
selves, but by a generous rivalry in working for right- 
eousness and against evil." 

The church to him did not consist of building, 
preacher, or choir. It was, rather, a place of wor- 
ship. He did not go to hear a great preacher or a 
noted choir or see a cathedral structure. Most of his 
worship was observed in humble buildings with or- 
dinary music and preaching. He did not excuse the 
faults of church members, neither did he expect them 
to be perfect, but he worked through the organiza- 



340 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

tion called the church to improve them, receive help, 
and widen the influence of religion. He did not for- 
get the "assembling" together in common worship to 
aid each other to obtain happiness and scatter help- 
fulness. He was therefore loyal to its services, its 
aims, and its claims. To him religion and its organ- 
ized form, the church, was never secondary, but al- 
ways primary. 



CHAPTER XVII 
CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 

"I advocate a man's joining in church work for the sake 
of showing his faith by his works." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to 
good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves to- 
gether.— Heft. 10. 24, 25. 

MR. ROOSEVELT always acted in line with 
his belief. When he decided that the Re- 
publican party was the one most nearly 
correct, he publicly affiliated with it and identified 
himself actively with a local party club. Friends 
ridiculed the poor caliber of its membership. He 
ignored this criticism and started to improve the 
members by interesting them in better government. 
He continued to render his public service through a 
party organization. He admitted its weakness and 
faults, but instead of using this to excuse inactivity 
he exerted himself to make it better. 

He joined the church in the same practical way. 
He believed in what the church stood for, and since 
he believed also in organization he identified himself 
with a visible body of believers. He did not require 
perfection in membership, nor was he willing to be a 
religious "mugwump." He did not stay out because 
there were so many hypocrites in the church; that 
would have kept him out of the Republican party. 

341 



342 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He also went to work, for very early he taught a 
Sunday-school class and continued until he gradu- 
ated from college. Mr. Washburne, his classmate, 
wrote me: "I remember that he taught a Sunday- 
school class when he was in college, which was quite 
an unusual occupation for a college student.'^ And 
he encountered some unpleasant experiences in his 
church work, but acted toward those experiences 
even as he did in his political clubs. He was teaching 
in Old Christ Church, where General and Mrs. Wash- 
ington had attended in 1775, when suddenly he was 
asked to resign by the new rector. A classmate tells 
us: 

The news spread about college like flames through a build- 
ing. We learned Roosevelt was removed because he was not 
a confirmed member of the Episcopal Church. Everybody 
lauded Roosevelt. One Professor actually withdrew from 
the congregation. But Roosevelt did not take the occur- 
rence to heart.^ 

Another "story" already related attributed his ex- 
pulsion from the Sunday school to the fact that he 
rewarded a boy for using his fists in a righteous 
cause. However that may be, he immediately found 
another Sunday school and continued teaching. He 
did not get offended because of mistreatment nor 
break with the church because it was not perfect. 

If he had not joined a conservative denomination 
which used laymen very little, he might have been 
much more active. He once said that if he had been 
a Methodist he would have sought for a local 



^Theodore Rooteveit <u an Undergraduate, p. 20. 




Harris & Ewinji 



Y 



TWO CHURCH DOORS 

The two doors Mr. Roosevelt faithfully entered. 

Above— The Oyster Bay Church Door. 
Below— The Washington Church Door. 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 343 

preacher's license which is given to laymen. He 
never criticized the church as a whole or individu- 
ally, though once in urging the Lutheran Church to 
give up German and use English exclusively, he did 
say: "Had the Dutch Reformed church to which I 
have the honor to belong, changed to English earlier, 
it would in all probability be one of the leading 
churches in New York." 

A great many people join the church, especially 
Protestants, and straightway forget it. They attend 
seldom and give scant support. Very few engage 
actively in church work ; vast numbers are satisfied 
if their names are on old records in the childhood 
home instead of glorying in being militant members. 
They are like American citizens who pay no taxes, 
neglect voting, and take no part in public matters. 
Mr . Roosevelt as severely arraigns the man who 
neglects the church in this way as he did the non- 
voting and careless citizen. 

No clergyman could put the whole case of the 
church more strongly than he did in an article in 
The Ladies' Home Journal for October, 1917, under 
the subject, "Shall We Do Away With the Church?" 
Mrs. Robinson told the writer that in her judgment 
this was "the most splendid thing" her brother ever 
wrote. 

When writing at that time of aiding the faithful 
pastor and his wife he urges regular church attend- 
ance, saying: 

He can't help them [the pastor and his wife] unless he is 
a reasonably regular church attendant. Otherwise he is an 
outsider and is felt to be such both by the people in and out 



344 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

of the church and hence his activities in the church are 
only those an outsider can play. 

Kermit informed me that when ^'we were on the 
^African' trip, father usually found a mission or 
some kind of a church to attend every Sunday." 
Mr. Hagedorn, who worked closely with him during 
the days preceding his death, remarked that "He 
seldom, if ever, failed to attend church if he was in 
physical condition to attend and was within reach 
of any Christian church.'' Mr. Loeb told me: "He 
had the churchgoing habit and enjoyed it. He felt 
that the American father should attend regularly." 

Mr. Leary said that Mr. Roosevelt w^as greatly 
pleased when he told him one Sunday that the news- 
paper "boys" were surprised to see him break his cus- 
tom and fail to attend on a particular Sunday when 
he happened to be ill. 

President Nicholas Murray Butler told me that he 
spent many Sundays with Mr. Roosevelt, both in 
Albany and at the White House, and that he never 
failed to go to church. "He would," continued Dr. 
Butler, "avoid the larger and more fashionable 
churches and seek the small church with an earnest 
body of worshipers. He was invariably in place when 
the service opened. He didn't have a good singing 
voice, but he joined in nevertheless. He listened 
closely to the sermon and had something to say about 
it on the way home. On our Sunday walks he usually 
talked of character, a Christian's duties, and the 
value of church attendance and work." 

W. Emlen Roosevelt expressed the opinion that 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 345 

Mr. Roosevelt "thought that the church was an or- 
ganization vital to the welfare of all the people and 
supported it as such." 

"Mr. Roosevelt recognized that his career and posi- 
tion made him a marked man," said Mr. McGrath, 
"and he was eager to show by his example his belief 
that churchgoing was a requisite habit for the de- 
velopment of the best type of citizenship." 

When he was in the Spanish War he encouraged 
his men to attend religious services. Rabbi Kraus- 
koff, of Temple Keneseth Israel, Philadelphia, relates 
a visit he made to the general camp which was under 
the command of General Joseph Wheeler when the 
General suggested that he hold a service for the Jews. 
The Rabbi says that he 

gladly accepted his offer, and he delegated an orderly to 
summon the Jewish boys from the different posts. Presently 
they began to appear, singly or in groups of two or three 
from all directions. Those under Roosevelt's charge, how- 
ever, came in a body, headed by the Colonel himself. His 
coming was intended to be as much of a compliment to the 
boys as to myself. 

In his Letters to His Children are many references 
to his habit of church attendance. He writes Kermit 
of his fondness for John Hay and tells him that he 
stopped to see him every Sunday on "my way home 
from church." 

He writes to Miss Emily Carow of one Sunday 
when all the inhabitants of three Roosevelt houses 
went to a Sunday service on the "great battleship 
Kearsarge." 



346 ROOSEVELT^S BELIGION 

Oyster Bay is only thirty miles from New York 
but Mr. Roosevelt never came to the city to hear 
gifted preachers and famous choirs. For thirty 
years he attended the frame Episcopal church 
(Christ) in the village and sat in a pew hav- 
ing a straight board back, made by the con- 
structing carpenters. The building seats three 
hundred and forty-four people and has thirteen 
rows of seats (evidently no superstition bothered 
them) and the Roosevelt family was assigned 
the tenth from the front or the fourth from 
the back. It was near the door through which 
Mr. Roosevelt always entered quietly. He usually 
walked the two and a half miles from his home 
and so was not sleepy when he entered. If 
visitors cared to accompany him, they came along 
— if not, he excused himself and came without them. 
The rector assured me that he was very rarely absent. 
The building is very simple in form and inexpensive 
in construction. Only the altar nave has a modern 
decoration, which was put on for the wedding of Mrs. 
Derby. There is a beautiful picture of Christ 
blessing the people over the altar. The old school 
teacher who trained the Roosevelt children under- 
went a dangerous operation and was told to call up 
a cheering memory before going under the opiate. 
She related afterward that she revisioned this Christ- 
picture and that her last remembrance pictured him 
leaving the window frame and coming to and touch- 
ing her until all fear fled. The altar is far up in 
the nave and here only twelve could kneel at a time 
to receive the communion. The beautiful altar 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 347 

cloth is a memorial to Lucy Margaret Roosevelt, the 
daughter of W. Emlen Roosevelt (Theodore's 
cousin), who accompanied the Roosevelts on the 
South American trip, where she contracted typhoid 
fever, from which she died. There is a beautiful mar- 
ble baptismal font at the left of the altar, beside 
which Mr. Roosevelt stood several times when acting 
as godfather at the baptism of infants. This church, 
like Grace Reformed Church in Washington, which 
Mr. Roosevelt attended, has kneeling stools, which he 
regularly used. 

The present church building was erected in 1878 
but the organization dates back to 1706. In 1906 the 
two hundredth anniversary was celebrated and 
President Roosevelt participated, as is shown on the 
tablet pictured on another page. It is the only place 
where his name appears in the church building. 

Four hundred members are enrolled on the church 
records. Nearly one fourth of them were in "service" 
during the Great War, for ninety-seven names are 
recorded on the Honor Roll. There are nine Roose- 
velts on the roll. The pastor's son and daughter are 
included. Mrs. Roosevelt and her daughter Ethel 
(Mrs. Derby) are active members of the Saint Hilda 
Society, the one woman's society, which dbes all the 
home and foreign missionary work — for women — 
in the church. This society attended the funeral in 
a body and were the only residents of Oyster Bay 
who witnessed the wedding of Dr. and Mrs. Derby. 
It held no receptions for two years after Mr. Roose- 
velt's death, when Mrs. Roosevelt revived the custom 
by inviting them to her house. 



318 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

The godly rector is Rev. G. E. Talmage, who ac- 
cepted the position eleven years ago. He was origi- 
nally a clergyman in the Dutch Reformed Church, 
the denomination to which Mr. Roosevelt actually 
belonged. He is sanely spiritual, friendly, natural, 
and very human. He does not stress denominational 
dififerences but in a pamphlet issued by the church 
the words are given: ''Our faith is that of the 
universal church." He is a sturdy ethical preacher, 
applying the Bible in a practical way to current 
problems. He is a house-visiting pastor. He thought 
it not unusual when he visited Mr. Roosevelt at the 
hospital to pray with him, for he treated him "as 
any other parishioner." He has an Italian assistant, 
to serve that race now moving into Oyster Bay. 

Dr. Talmage conducted the funeral service in this 
humble church, which was crowded with five hundred 
of America's most noted men. Ex-President Taft, 
Vice-President Marshall, Speaker Champ Clark, the 
Hon. Charles E. Hughes, Ambassador Jusserand, 
and scores more like them were there. There was 
no music. The hymn, ''How Firm a Foundation" was 
read. The whole service consisted of ritual. Not 
an address was made. It did not consume thirteen 
minutes. And yet there was not a dry eye in this 
assemblage of great men. He was buried in Young's 
Memorial Cemetery, in which, though it is over sev- 
enty-five years old, there are not over two hundred 
graves. The picture on another page will show the 
simplicity of the gravestone. Hundreds visit the 
spot every week and go away wondering at the 
Christlike simplicity shown everywhere. 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 349 

While Theodore Roosevelt was Vice-President and 
President he attended the little Grace Reformed 
church located between Rhode Island Avenue and 
P Street on 15th Street N. W. His own distinct 
denomination was the Dutch Reformed, but it is 
closely related to the ^'Reformed Church in the 
United States," which has one third of a million 
members. When he first went to Washington, they 
were worshiping in a little frame chapel on the rear 
of the lot and seating less than two hundred people. 
The present structure will take care of about four 
hundred. When he attended they had three hundred 
members. 

It is very churchly and much ritual is employed. 
Six beautiful stained glass windows in order depict 
incidents in the life of Jesus as follows : The Wise 
Men, The Child in the Temple, Jesus in the Home of 
Mary and Martha, The Good Shepherd, Jesus 
Crowned with Thorns, and the Resurrection. 

It is interesting to note that the last named is the 
largest window and was placed there by George F. 
Baer, who was one of Mr. Roosevelt's stiffest op- 
ponents in the anthracite coal strike. Mr. Baer was 
a member of the Second Reformed Church in Read- 
ing, Pennsylvania. 

The present pastor, the Rev. Henry Ranck, D.D., 
emphasized the fact that his denomination traced its 
origin back to Zwingli, who differed from Luther 
in that he emphasized the necessity of Christians 
entering into political matters and having a part in 
the government of the state, while Luther either dis- 
couraged it or neglected to enforce it. A very strong 



350 EOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

decorative feature of the front of the church shows 
the head of a knight and a burgher. This the pastor 
explained was to emphasize the fact that a Christian 
should enter into state affairs energetically and 
dominantly. That fact doubtless appealed to Mr. 
Roosevelt. 

Over the two side entrance doors there is a strik- 
ing stone cut reproduction of lilies among thorns, 
which also emphasized the necessity of righteousness 
combating evil. Near the top of the front of the 
building is another symbol depicting the cross as 
supporting the world, to emphasize the necessity of 
sacrifice if men are to be strong and helpful. Soldiers 
and helmets also mark the stone adornments to en- 
force the need of battling for righteousness. 

It was my privilege to talk with the present pastor 
and then to have a delightful interview with the 
widow of the man who was pastor during the time 
Theodore Roosevelt attended there, that is, eight 
years. After consulting with them and with others, 
the following facts have been woven together, and 
while traceable to no one person, they are authentic : 

The Rev. John M. Schick was a graduate of 
Mercersburg College and Theological Seminary. This 
school also gave him his degree of D.D. He called 
upon Mr. Roosevelt on Saturday of the week he ar- 
rived in Washington as Vice-President. The follow- 
ing Sunday he appeared at the church with his whole 
family and never missed a service after that while in 
the city. Dr. Schick was not a brilliant preacher but 
was blunt, straightforward, and always hit the nail 
on the head. He was not afraid of anybody, delivered 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WOKK 351 

the truth as he saw it, and always related it closely 
to the Bible. He was an earnest student of the Scrip- 
tures and gave many exegetical sermons. He had a 
skeleton of his sermon before him and repeated fre- 
quently for the sake of emphasis. 

He was self-possessed, clear-eyed, not given to flat- 
tery, sincere in his friendships, high idealed, and 
bore himself like an old-time prophet. He was con- 
servative in theology, but progressive in his views of 
political righteousness. He held the old-fashioned 
notions of God, the Bible, and the church. He be- 
came a real friend of Mr. Roosevelt. 

Dr. and Mrs. Schick often attended social func- 
tions as the guests of Mrs. Roosevelt. They were 
among the very few outside guests who attended the 
Longworth wedding. The pastor's boy, John, and 
Mr. Roosevelt's Archibald were schoolmates, and so 
John was often present at the children's parties. 

Mr. Roosevelt came late one morning to a service. 
Two or three told me that he was much flustered by 
this fact. He assured the deacon, Mr. Thomas, that 
he would never be late again. He never was. As 
regular as the clock struck, two minutes before the 
services began he was in his place. The officials of 
the church assigned to him the third pew from the 
front. The pastor's family sat in front of him, while 
one of the officers of the church sat behind him. Just 
across the aisle sat Commodore Shock, an old-fash- 
ioned Methodist who lived in the neighborhood and 
enjoyed Dr. Schick's preaching. The President often 
spoke to him. It was the custom in the church for 
one to bow the head on the front of the pew when 



352 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

coming into the service. There were kneeling 
benches which were used through the ritualistic 
prayers by the whole congregation. When Mr. 
Roosevelt arrived he would always greet members 
of the pastor's family and visit with them until the 
church service began. 

One day Mrs. Schick told John, then seven years 
old, that he must not turn around and shake hands 
with the President, as it drew too much public atten- 
tion to him. Next Sunday John slipped his hand 
around the end of the seat without turning around. 
The President immediately grabbed it and assured 
the family that he wanted the boy always to speak 
to him. The church was carefully guarded. Three 
secret service men always accompanied him. Mr. 
Roosevelt regularly walked to church, a distance of 
about two miles, and back again. Mrs. Roosevelt 
was frequently with him. At times he brought 
guests. His sister, Mrs. Robinson, often accompa- 
nied him. One day a cripple boy stepped aside to let 
the President pass in ahead of him, but Mr. Roose- 
velt was not content with that arrangement and in- 
sisted that the "boy" pass into the church first. 

He rarely missed a Sunday-morning service. If 
compelled to be absent, he would send a messenger 
from the White House before the hour of worship, 
to tell the pastor why it was necessary for him to be 
absent. At one time they had diphtheria in the 
White House and he sent a note explaining that 
while he was not near the cases, yet it might not be 
best for him to attend, especially when little John, 
the pastor's son, sat right in front of him. 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WOKK 353 

Hot or cold weather did not affect him. One who 
attended the church regularly told me that one ter- 
rifically hot day he came in saturated with per- 
spiration and accompanied by Mr. Garfield. He did 
not notice the heat but when the service began en- 
tered into it heartily. 

Once as he started into the church a tourist under- 
took to take a picture. He usually consented to such 
arrangements, but he immediately raised his hand 
and said, "No pictures on Sunday.'^ He dressed in 
a Prince Albert coat. He gave the closest attention 
to the sermon by the pastor. He sang every hymn 
heartily. The church was too poor to employ a 
quartette. They had no music except the congrega- 
tional singing. The pastor's son was the precentor. 
Those who sat around him testified that they could 
hear his voice in the hymns, ringing loud and clear, 
and usually singing from memory. He regularly 
entered into the communion service. It was cus- 
tomary for the members to come to the front and 
stand around the altar railing until they had re- 
ceived the bread and wine which commemorated the 
sacrificial death of the Saviour. He always went to 
the first table and stood by the side of the pastor's 
family. He then returned to his seat and remained 
there until everyone had taken communion and the 
audience was dismissed. ( See cut facing page 329. ) 

When the regular Sunday service was over and 
the benediction had been pronounced, the people 
stood in their place. Dr. Schick walked down to the 
pew where stood Mr. Roosevelt, shook hands with 
him, took him by the arm and chatted with him as 



354 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

together they walked out of the auditorium. When 
Mr. Roosevelt had departed then the rest of the 
audience filed out. 

The seats in the church were always reserved for 
the members. Countless numbers of people wanted 
to attend but could not be admitted. He therefore 
worshiped with the real people, none of them wealthy 
and all of them among the so-called common people. 

He had a constant and warm interest in the affairs 
of the church. He encouraged the building of the 
new church, he laid the corner stone, handling the 
trowel to do it while President. He presented two 
beautiful bishop's chairs which are still in their 
place in the pulpit. He made appointments during 
his busy day at the White House to discuss church 
matters with the pastor. He sent flowers to adorn 
the pulpit every Saturday from the White House 
greenhouses. He attended a reception soon after he 
became President at the church, to which only the 
members of the church were invited. Before leaving 
Washington as President, in the busiest part of his 
life, he attended another reception for the member- 
ship only and spent the evening conversing with the 
church folk and bidding them good-by. 

He greatly loved John, the younger boy in the 
pastor's family. Learning that he was interested 
in engines, he constantly brought him books on the 
subject. Every Christmas he presented him a strik- 
ing Christmas present. One Sunday just before 
Christmas he carried a package, nearly a yard long, 
all the way from the White House. At the close of 
the service he handed it to John and told him not to 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 355 

open it until Christmas day. It contained a lot of 
tin soldiers. At another time he presented John, 
who still shows it, a cast of the left hand of Lincoln 
made by Volk from life. He told John that he him- 
self had the right hand and he would be glad to give 
him the left hand. 

Mr. Roosevelt endeavored to be thoroughly con- 
sistent. He issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in 
which he urged the people to assemble in their 
churches. Dr. Schick called the President's attention 
to the fact that he attended a family reunion and 
did not himself attend church. Mr. Roosevelt replied 
that it was the only time he could have his family 
together. But after that, recognizing his own neg- 
lect of the exhortation, he omitted the suggestion 
that the people assemble in their churches. The 
people looked upon Mr. Roosevelt not as President 
but as a fellow worshiper, a genuine disciple of 
Christ, who with them gathered strength and in- 
spiration from the communion service, from the 
prayers, and from the public worship. He carried 
no pomp and expected no preferment, but came as a 
humble disciple of the lowly Nazarene. 

"He walked three miles to church, wrote the 
Rev. George E. Talmage, in The Churchman : 

During the gasless Sundays last fall [during the war], 
when many made the requirements an excuse for staying 
home, he set the example of loyalty by walking the three 
miles from Sagamore Hill to the village church and back 
home again. And this, by the way, was shortly after his 
return from a serious operation which affected his walking 
not a little. 



356 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He did not make a show of church attendance, or 
some carping critic might have declared that he was 
a hypocrite. It was as natural for him to attend as 
it was to retire to read a stimulating book or look 
for birds in the woods or row a boat in the crisp fall 
air. And he drew strength and wisdom from it just 
as certainly as from any other exercise. 

William Allen White, in a personal letter to the 
writer, said : 

When he was in Emporia in 1912, Roosevelt came on 
Sunday morning. He was tired after a long, hard cam- 
paign; weary and overstrained. He needed sleep, but he 
got up and went to church and it was then that we had the 
talk about God and religion. He went to a very small 
church, I think the smallest congregation we have, the 
Dutch Reformed church. He did not let it be announced 
to what church he was going, because he wanted to avoid 
a crowd and be undisturbed as far as possible. I went with 
him, and I remember this curious incident. He sang with 
his hands behind him, without the book, from memory, the 
entire hymn, "How Firm a Foundation Ye Saints of the 
Lord," and did not miss a word. I stood by him and was 
interested to see if at any time he would get to da-da-ing 
or la-la-ing, but no word escaped him. He was letter perfect. 
There were few people in the church and no reporters. The 
reporters had all gone over to one of the big churches 
which had extended an invitation to the Colonel to be 
present. 

Another mark of his wise church attendance was 
that he always attended his own church if one ex- 
isted where he was stopping. He did not look up an 
attractive "preacher" and a noted choir. It is well 
to love all the churches, but, like a good soldier, the 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 357 

wise man will select one to serve in as his "company" 
where he can best train and fight. 

"On his travels he always asked," said Mrs. Robin- 
son to me, "if there was a Dutch Reformed church in 
town, and chose that for the purpose of public wor- 
ship." 

"He allowed no engagement to keep him from go- 
ing to church," said Mr. Loeb. "While he felt at 
home in any church, he always went to a Dutch Re- 
formed if one was within reach." 

It is well to remember this choice of and loyalty 
to one church. The person who wanders from one 
church to another, without being attached to any 
particular church, deludes himself when he calls that 
practice an evidence of breadth ; it is pure shallow- 
ness, and usually marks the spiritual slacker. He 
himself said to Dr. Iglehart : 

When I first came to Washington I did not know there 
was any Dutch Reformed church here, and went with my 
wife to the Episcopal church. But on becoming Vice-Presi- 
dent I learned that there was a little obscure red brick 
building of that denomination, and I immediately selected 
that as my church. The new building has since been erected. 
I take sentimental satisfaction in worshiping in the church 
of my fathers (p. 196). 

He commended others for going to church. The 
Rev. D. D. Forsyth, D.D., secretary of the Board of 
Home Missions and at that time pastor of the Meth- 
odist church in Cheyenne, in a letter tells me of the 
President commending a soldier when he met him at 
church. 



358 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Theodore Roosevelt was in Cheyenne on the Sabbath day 
and worshiped in our church. While we were singing the 
last hymn he came down the aisle and shook hands with 
me as the preacher. He then went out of the church into 
the vestioule. You remember that Fort A. D. Russell is 
just outside of Cheyenne. We had in our church a 13th 
Artilleryman from the Fort who had been an usher in our 
church for a number of years. Theodore Roosevelt noticed 
the artilleryman ushering in the aisle near him. When in 
the vestibule he sent for the 13th Artilleryman and in 
shaking hands with him, made this statement, "I wish you 
to understand, sir, that I think you are at your post of 
duty and I certainly congratulate you upon having a part 
in the life of this church." 

He saw the flimsiness of the excuses against 
church attendance and punctured the assertion that 
one could worship in the woods or at home. So he 
advises : 

Therefore on Sunday go to church. Yes — I know all the 
excuses, I know that one can worship the Creator and dedi- 
cate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a 
running brook, or in one's own house, just as well as in 
church. But I also know that as a matter of cold fact the 
average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself. 
If he stays away from church, he does not spend his time 
in good works or in lofty meditation. He looks over the 
colored supplement of the newspaper, he yawns, and he 
finally seeks relief from the mental vacuity of isolation by 
going where the combined mental vacuity of many partially 
relieves the mental vacuity of each particular individual. 
(Ladies' Home Journal, October, 1917, by permission). 

Continuing, he declared that Sunday loafing de- 
moralizes the home : 
The household in which Sunday is treated merely as a 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 359 

day for easy self-indulgence does not on that day offer an 
attractive spectacle, nor does it afford a healthy stimulus 
toward right living for the children. In such a household 
the master of the house generally rises late. . . . Having 
risen, he merely dawdles half-dressed, smokes and reads the 
Sunday papers, lounges around the place if nothing more 
attractive offers itself, and finally goes off to the club or 
other lounging place. 

The mistress of the household stays ... in bed too, with 
the Sunday paper, or with a cheap magazine or cheap novel ; 
then also lounges around the house before fully dressing 
and finally visits or receives visits from some other women 
who also regard slipshod absence of effort as the proper 
characteristic of the day. 

Church attendance offers a good way to begin 
Sunday and to enrich the day : ^'If he has merely 
worked healthily hard, and is healthily tired, it will 
be from every standpoint an excellent thing for him 
to begin his Sunday by going to church." 

He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless 
he is very unfortunate he will hear a sermon by a good 
man. . . . Besides, even if he doesn't hear a good sermon, 
the probabilities are that he will listen to and take part in 
reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. . . . More- 
over, he will probably take part in singing some good 
hymns. He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good, quiet 
neighbors. 

He finds a tonic in the services and the activities 
of the church: 

Church attendance and church work of some kind mean 
both the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsi- 
bility for others and the sense of braced moral strength 
which prevents a relaxation of one's fiber. 



360 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

He believed that labor troubles would be lessened 
if the leaders of labor and capital worked together 
in the church : 

Surely half of our labor troubles would disappear if a 
sufficient number of the leaders on both sides had worked 
for common ends in the same churches, Young Men's Chris- 
tian Associations, or other like organizations, and ap- 
proached one another's positions with an earnest desire to 
understand them and understanding, respect them. 

He contends that Sunday must not be made an 
open holiday, and to use it solely for pleasure will 
cause one to suffer deterioration. He classifies as 
deluded and foolish those who loaf around the house 
with those who have more energy but waste it and 

habitually spend the entire day in the motor or take part in 
some form of dress parade, or visit brightly lighted res- 
taurants. I seriously doubt whether people such as these 
even achieve their purpose. I doubt whether the frank 
pursuit of nothing but amusement has really brought as 
much happiness as if it had been alloyed with and supple- 
mented by some minimum meeting of obligation toward 
others. There are enough holidays for most of us which 
can quite properly be devoted to pure holiday making. 

He urges laymen to aid in providing and safe- 
guarding real happiness creators: 

Let every layman interested in church work . . . pro- 
ceed on the assumption that innocent pleasure which does 
not interfere with things even more desirable is in itself a 
good; that this is as true of one day of the week as of 
another; and that one function of the church should be 
the encouragement of happiness in small things as well as 
in large. 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 361 

Continuing the objections to a Sunday of pleasure 
seeking he asserts that church attendance will give 
real recreation: 

In ordinary cases, as regards most men and women, the 
performance of their duties to the church, to themselves, 
and to others, on Sunday represents merely such "toning 
up" of their systems as will enable them to profit more by 
rest and amusement during the remainder of the day. 

The whole article carries irrefutable argument for 
the church. 

^'Bill'^ Sewall told me that Mr. Roosevelt never 
fished, hunted, or played games on Sunday, though 
he would go on long tramps. ^'Once because we were 
so far from a church that we lost track of the days 
he mistook Sunday for Saturday, went hunting," 
said Bill, "and was greatly embarrassed when he 
discovered it." 

Mr. Roosevelt was jealous of his time and hence 
followed no practice that did not equip him to be of 
largest service to mankind. If, therefore, he re- 
ceived no definite and otherwise unobtainable bene- 
fits, or if those benefits could have been obtained in 
a better way, he would not have continued to attend 
church himself or have urged others to do so.. When 
he went, however, he used the means — ritual, songs, 
prayer and sermon — which centuries of experience 
have proved necessary to make a service helpful. 

He is convinced that the clergyman alone is unable 
to make a church thrive: 

There are plenty of clergymen of all denominations who 
do obey this law [of service] ; they render inestimable serv- 



362 EOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

ice. Yet these men can do but little unless keen, able, 
zealous laymen give them aid; and this aid is beyond com- 
parison most effective when rendered by men who are them- 
selves active participants in the work of the church (The 
Ladies' Home Journal, October, 1917). 

The question : Will a Christian show his genuine- 
ness by being a church member and by doing church 
work? is answered: 

Every man who is a Christian at all should join some 
church organization. I advocate a man's joining in church 
work for the sake of showing his faith by his works. . . . 
Micah's insistence upon loving mercy and doing justice 
and walking humbly with the Lord will suffice if lived up 
to, and Amos and Isaiah and the Psalms, and the Gospels 
and Paul and James will furnish sufficient instruction for 
both the men who are simple enough and the men who are 
wise enough. 

He feels confident that "saving the soul" will then 
solve itself : 

Let the man not think overmuch of saving his own soul; 
that will come of itself, if he tries in good earnest to look 
after his neighbor, both in soul and in body — remembering 
always that he had better leave his neighbor alone rather 
than show arrogance or tactlessness in the effort to help 
him. 

Practical service such as "visiting and comforting 
the widow and the fatherless and the sore stricken" 
is also commended. 

He further admonishes: "Unless it is the poor 
man's church it is not a Christian church at all in 
any real sense." The rich man needs it, but he must 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 3G3 

be a real brother among others. ^'The church in a 
mining or factory town or railway center must be 
a leading force in getting the best possible living 
conditions for the people." In another address he 
enlarges the idea of social service to the neighbor- 
hood. Unless the church concerns itself 

with their chance to open a cleft upward into the life of 
full development, it has forfeited its right to the foremost 
place in the regard of men. By their fruits shall ye know 
them. We judge a man nowadays by his conduct rather 
than by his dogma. 

In an address celebrating the Centennial of Pres- 
byterian Home Missions May 20, 1902, he insists that 
the church must lead in meeting the new city prob- 
lems: 

The forces for evil, as our great cities grow, become more 
concentrated, more menacing to the community and if the 
community is to go forward and not back, they must be 
met and overcome by forces for good that have grown in 
corresponding degree. More and more in the future our 
churches must realize that we have a right to expect that 
they shall take the lead in shaping these forces for good. 

This wise disciple had not been led astray, how- 
ever, as so many humanity lovers have been, by ex- 
pecting better social conditions alone to uplift and 
deliver man. He recognizes old-fashioned "conver- 
sion," the existence of a mystical spiritual power 
and the work of such evangelists as "Billy" Sunday 
and the gifted preacher : 

The betterment may come in many ways. The great ex- 



364 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

horter or preacher, the Billy Sunday or Phillips Brooks, 
the priest or clergyman or rabbi, the cardinal or bishop, or 
revivalist or Salvation Army commander, may, by sheer fer- 
vor and intensity, and by kindling some flame of the spirit 
which mystics have long known to be real and which 
scientists now admit to be real, rouse numbers of consciences 
to life and free seared souls from sin; and then the roused 
conscience and the freed soul will teach the bodies in 
which they dwell how to practice the great law of service 
(The Ladies' Home Journal, October, 1917). 

He paid high tribute, as shown in another place, 
to the early pioneer circuit-rider in the West. He 
insisted that no community was safe or could pro- 
gress without the presence and work of the church 
in those early days. 

No Indians are civilized unless they were first 
Christianized. While civil service commissioner he 
visited the Indian reservations and expressed a high 
estimate of the missionary work among these "na- 
tive" Americans. 

I spent twice the time out here I intended to because I 
became interested, and traveled all over the reservations 
to see what was being done, especially by the missionaries. 
For it needed no time at all to see that the great factors 
in uplifting the Indian were the men who were teaching him 
to become a Christian citizen. When I came back I wished 
it had been in my power to convey my experience to those 
people— often well-meaning people— who speak of the in- 
efficiency of missions. I think if they could realize a tenth 
part of the work not only being done, but that has been done 
out there, they would realize that no more practical work 
or more productive of fruit for civilization could be named 
than the work carried on by the men and women who give 
their lives to preaching the gospel of Christ to mankind. 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WOKK 865 

It has been common to ridicule foreign missions 
as carried on by the churches and to freely charge 
that the time and money thus expended was wasted. 
This plea is shallowly covered by a phrase, "Charity 
begins at home." The civilized world is less free 
in making such thoughtless remarks now than be- 
fore the Great War. If it had not been for Chris- 
tian truths and followers in India and other Mo- 
hammedan lands, the millions of Mohammedans 
would have answered the call of the Turks to help 
the German cause. The unselfish spirit that sent us 
into the Philippines to lift a hopeless people, some 
of whom were head-hunters and cannibals, was 
purely missionary and would not have appeared in 
any but a Christian nation. And Mr. Roosevelt 
sturdily upheld that program. The missionary spirit 
fathered the idea, for example, of sending over one 
thousand school-teachers to the Philippines. The 
doctrine of the brotherhood of man will not permit 
us to build a fence of isolation around our nation. 
God discarded Israel when she failed to succor and 
lift the world. Cuba's helpless cry sent us into war 
with Spain and the Allies^ plight drew us into the 
World War. 

It was, therefore, to be expected that this student 
of the Bible, who had also been courageous in carry- 
ing out the Philippine policy and in urging us into 
the Great War should heartily support the world 
program for the church which is commonly called 
"foreign missions." 

The rector of the Episcopalian (Mr. Roosevelt's) 
church at Oyster Bay tells us that one hot Sunday 



366 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

morning a missionary bishop preached, and it was 
announced that the next Sunday a collection would 
be taken for his cause. As the choir was being dis- 
missed Mr. Roosevelt came up and slipped a bill 
into the hands of the rector with the brief words, ^^I 
will not be here next Sunday but want to do my 
part." Continuing, the rector says: 

We have a little missionary group known as Saint Hilda's 
which meets each week for sewing, to which Mrs. Roosevelt 
belongs and in which Mr. Roosevelt took great interest. 
It was their custom to invite members to a reception every 
year. During the Presidential term one of these receptions 
was on the Mayflower, then anchored in the harbor. It 
was a highly honored group to be permitted this friendship, 
for it was a sincere and personal relationship. Never a 
sorrow entered their homes but sympathy came from Saga- 
more Hill, and not infrequently a personal visit as well. 

The President had a very high estimate of a for- 
eign missionary. When on a visit to the White 
House, Dr. Iglehart told of his son going out as a 
missionary to Japan, the President with deep feel- 
ing, said: 

Oh, I am so glad. ... I have told you so many times 
that I consider the Christian ministry as the highest calling 
in the world. ... As high an estimate as I have of the 
ministry, I consider that the climax of that calling is to go 
out in missionary service, as your son is doing. It takes 
mighty good stuff to be a missionary of the right type. . . . 
It takes a deal of courage to break the shell and go twelve 
thousand miles away, to risk an unfriendly climate, to 
master a foreign language, ... to adopt strange customs, 
to turn aside from earthly fame and emolument and most of 
all, to say good-by to home and the faces of the loved ones 



CHUKCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 367 

virtually forever. And yet your boy does not count this 
going as a hardship at all, but as an honor. 

The President then suggested, on his own initia- 
tive, that he was going to put Uncle Sam back of the 
boy by writing a letter of introduction to Mr. Lloyd 
Griscom, the United States minister to Japan. Some 
time after that Dr. Iglehart told the President that 
the letter had given the "boy" an unusual start, since 
they concluded him to be a distinguished person 
when he could bring a letter from *'so great a man," 
and that as a result, they gave him unusual liberties. 
After Dr. Iglehart had thanked him the President 
remarked : 

You noticed that I sent the letter to Mr. Griscom as an 
official document and asked him as a representative of our 
government to stand behind your son in his mission? I 
did not consider that America had any relation to Japan 
which is higher or more far-reaching than the education, 
morals, and religion that the missionary carries to that 
country (Iglehart, pp. 296-298). 

At the close of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 China 
agreed to pay our government an indemnity of |25,- 
000,000. Dr. Arthur H. Smith, a long-time mission- 
ary in China, later suggested to Dr. Lyman Abbott 
that since that sum more than met our "claims" it 
would be a strategic and profitable thing to return 
one half of the money to China. He proposed, how- 
ever, that China pledge to use the money to send 
students to America and to educate others in a Chi- 
nese institution. Dr. Abbott presented the plan to 
President Roosevelt, who was much interested and 



368 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

made an appointment to see Dr. Smith, who pre- 
sented the plan as it was later adopted by America. 
Mr. Lawrence Abbott accompanied Dr. Smith on 
this visit to the President. Ten years afterward he 
attended a luncheon given at Princeton for Professor 
Robert McNutt McElroy, who was going out as the 
first American exchange professor to China. The 
Professor asked Mr. Abbott about the reported origin 
of the "returned indemnity'' so that he might speak 
authoritatively in China. Mr. Abbott wrote Mr. 
Roosevelt at Oyster Bay, on January 24, who replied : 

My memory agrees with yours about Dr. Arthur H. Smith. 
I had forgotten his name; but I know that it was through 
your father that I first became interested in using that in- 
demnity for educational purposes. The idea was suggested 
to me as you describe it; and then I asked Root to take it 
up and put it in operation. 

The friendship of China was insured and a chain 
of influence started which is rapidly building a Chris- 
tian republic there. A large school was erected by 
the government with part of the money, and every 
teacher in it is a Christian. It is liberally patron- 
ized. In addition the fund enables scores of Chinese 
students to study in this country. And all of it 
came about through the vision of a foreign mission- 
ary and the President's confidence in a representa- 
tive of that profession. 

The Colonel, in his world trip, saw much of mis- 
sions and most heartily approved them and went out 
of his way many times to aid in dedicating mission 
buildings. Concerning Africa, he said : 



CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND WORK 369 

The great good done by missionary effort in Africa has 
been incalculable. The effort is made consistently to teach 
the natives how to live a more comfortable, useful and 
physically and morally cleanly life, not under white condi- 
tions, but under the conditions which he will actually have 
to face when he goes back to his people to live among them, 
and if things go well, to be in his turn an unconscious mis- 
sionary for good. 

He shows how Christianity saved Uganda from 
limitless suffering : 

The figures will show this, that out of about ten millions 
of people, nearly seven millions were killed during the 
years of the Mahdi uprising. Now, that is what Christian- 
ity saved Uganda from; that is what missionary effort saved 
Uganda from. It saved it from sufferings of which we, in 
our sheltered and civilized lives, can literally form only the 
most imperfect idea, and I wish that the well-meaning 
people who laugh at or decry missionary work could realize 
what the missionary work has done right there in Middle 
Africa (The Daily News' "New Stories of Roosevelt"). 

While he did encourage the medical mission work 
he readily saw that this kind of work, if it endured, 
must ultimately reach and stir the soul and so he 
gives encouragement to believe that this will be the 
result as he describes a visit to Sobat, while speaking 
at Khartum : 

I stopped a few days ago at the little mission at the 
Sobat. . . . From one hundred and twenty-five miles around 
there were patients who had come in to be attended to by 
the doctors in the mission. ... I do not know a better 
type of missionary than the doctor who comes out here and 
does his work well and gives his whole heart to it. He is 
doing practical work of the most valuable type for civiliza- 



370 ROOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

tion. ... If you make it evident to a man that you are 
sincerely concerned in bettering his body, he will be much 
more ready to believe that you are trying to better his soul. 

The Chicago Tribune commissioned John Callan 
O'Laughlin to proceed up the Nile and meet Mr. 
Roosevelt at the first possible point after he came out 
of the ''wilds." Mr. O'Laughlin used rare ingenuity 
and spared no expense in being the first one to greet 
him and found him at "Reuk." Soon afterward he 
was eating dinner with Mr. Roosevelt on his boat 
The Dal. Mr. O'Laughlin recounts the first things 
Mr. Roosevelt mentioned at this dinner : 

He spoke of the various missions he had visited, of the 
white souls and dauntless courage of these agents of Chris- 
tianity who are martyrs to the call of duty (O'Laughlin, 
Through Europe with Roosevelt, p. 36). 

Mr. Roosevelt's high estimate of the church and 
her work is the calm tribute of a great and experi- 
enced man of entire sincerity. His sturdy health, 
masculine traits, and mental independence would 
preclude the church from his strong commendation 
if, as some so easily assert, it is merely a crutch for 
the weak or a subterfuge for the thoughtless. His 
regular patronage, high praise, and earnest advocacy 
underwrite the church as a vital institution. 



^ 



BOOKS USED AS REFERENCE 

Theodore Roosevelt, the Man as I Kneio Him. By Fer- 
dinand C. Iglehart. Christian Herald. 

Bill SewalVs Story of Theodore Roosevelt. By William 
Wingate Sewall. Harper and Brothers. 

The Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt. By Herman Hage- 
dorn. Harper and Brothers. 

Theodore Roosevelt. By William Roscoe Thayer. Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company. 

The Life of Theodore Roosevelt. By William Draper 
Lewis. The John C. Winston Co. 

Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt. By Lawrence F. Ab- 
bott. Doubleday, Page & Company. 

Theodore Roosevelt — The Logic of His Career. By Charles 
G. Washburn. Houghton Mifflin Company. 

Oliver Cromwell. By Theodore Roosevelt. Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. 

Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the Man. By James Mor- 
gan. The Macmillan Company. 

Talks with T. R. By John J. Leary, Jr. Houghton Mif- 
flin Company. 

Personal Memoirs of the Home Life of the Late Theodore 
Roosevelt. By Albert Loren Cheney. Cheney Pub- 
lishing Company. 

Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children. Edited by 
Joseph B. Bishop. Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Theodore Roosevelt. An Autobiography. Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. 

American Ideals and Other Essays. By Theodore Roose- 
velt. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

Theodore Roosevelt. By Edmond Lester Pearson. The 
Macmillan Company. 

371 



372 KOOSEVELT'S RELIGION 

Theodore Roosevelt — The Citizen. By Jacob Riis. The Mac- 
millan Company. 

Camping and Tramping ivith Roosevelt. By John Bur- 
roughs. Houghton Mifflin Company. 

Average Americans. By Theodore Roosevelt. G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons. 

The Man Roosevelt. By Francis E. Leupp. D. Appleton 
& Company. 

The Most Interesting American. By Julian Street. The 
Century Company. 

Four Americans. By Henry A. Beers. Yale University. 

A Square Deal. By Theodore Roosevelt. The Allendale 
Press. 

The American Idea. By Joseph B. Gilda. Dodd, Mead & 
Company. 

Roosevelt, His Life Meaning and Messages. Vol. I, The 
Roosevelt Policy. The Current Literature Company. 

American Statesmen. By John T. Morse, Jr. Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 

The Many Sided Roosevelt. By George William Douglas. 
Dodd, Mead & Company. 

A Week in the White House. By William Bayard Hale. 

Memoirs of the White House. By Col. W. H. Crook. Little, 
Brown & Company, Boston. 

Theodore Roosevelt. By Charles Eugene Banks. S. Stone, 
Chicago. 

Theodore Roosevelt, Patriot and Statesman. By Robert 
C. V. Meyers. P. W. Ziegler & Company, Chicago. 

Theodore Roosevelt's Policy (See Theodore Roosevelt, His 
Life Meaning and Message, Vol. I). 

The Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood. By Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. Funk & Wagnalls Company. 

African and European Addresses. By Theodore Roosevelt. 
G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



BOOKS USED AS REFERENCE 373 

The Winning of the West. By Theodore Roosevelt. G. P. 

Putnam's Sons. 
From the Jwngle Through Europe with Roosevelt. By John 

Callan O'Laughlin. Chappie Publishing Co., Ltd., 

Boston. 
Realizable Ideals (The Earl Lectures). By Theodore Roose- 
velt. Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., San Francisco. 
The Great Adventure. By Theodore Roosevelt. Charles 

Scribner's Sons. 
Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Vols. I and II. By 

Joseph Bucklin Bishop. Charles Scribner's Sons. 
Americanism and Preparedness. Speeches of Theodore 

Roosevelt. The Mail and Express Job Print. 
Roosevelt vs. Newett. A Transcript of the Testimony Taken 

and Depositions read at Marquette, Michigan. 
Theodore Roosevelt as an Undergraduate. By Donald Wil- 

helm. John W. Luce & Co., publishers. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Lawrence, referred Beveridge, Senator, quoted, 



to, 92; quoted, 120, 167, 
189, 205, 212, 240, 241, 
242; letter of Mr. Roose- 
velt to, 267; cited, 368 

Abbott Dr. Lyman cited, 17, 
77; quoted, 156, 254, 263; 
strong testimony of, 234 

Addams, Jane, quoted, 205 

Africa, return of Mr. Roose- 
velt from, 132 

Allen, Governor Henry J. 
quoted, 232 

America, challenge issued 
to by Mr. Roosevelt, 258 

American Red Cross, the, 
forerunner of, 24 

"Applied Ethics," lecture on 
by Mr. Roosevelt, 250, 252, 
253 

Asceticism, 260 

Atheist, no use for, 239 

Attacks, readiness of Mr. 
Roosevelt for, 127 

Attempted assassination of 
Mr. Roosevelt, 297 

Attendance, church, 336; 
combined with work, 341, 
358, 359 

Baldwin, Miss Josephine L., 
incident reported by, 258 

Barnes, William, libel suit 
of, 166; charges against, 
213; significant words of, 
303 

Barton, Bruce, quoted, 17 

Beck, James M., quoted, 210 

Beecher, Henry Ward, re- 
ferred to, 74 

Beecher, Lyman, referred to, 
74 

Pegbie, Harold, g69 



91, 232; referred to, 128 

Bible, Mr. Roosevelt's opin- 
ion of the, 305 

Bible-reading in schools, bill 
for compulsory, 184 

Bible Society, entertained 
by Mr. Roosevelt, 306 

Bible texts used for address 
by Mr. Roosevelt, 312 

Bishop, J. B., 44; quoted, 
48, 191, 240, 243, 288 

Blaine, James G., nomina- 
tion of opposed by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 220 

"Blues," Mr. Roosevelt's 
fight against them, 168 

Bok, Edward, an experience 
of described, 160; story 
told by, 172 

"Boss," differentiated from 
"leader," 116; Mr. Roose- 
velt's treatment of a, 193 

Boutras Pasha, assassina- 
tion of, 216 

Bowman, Rev. W. I., quoted, 
234; referred to, 309; in- 
cident concerning daugh- 
ter of, 159 

Boy Scouts, Mr. Roosevelt 
offered leadership of, 172 

Brady, Governor, cited, 25 

Brownsville Negro soldiers' 
case, 114, 217 

Burroughs, John, quoted, 90, 
138, 223 

Business interests, special 
demands of, 102 

Butler, President Nicholas 
Murray, 17; quoted, 164, 
228, 238, 344 

Canteen, army, driven out, 

299 



375 



376 



INDEX 



Carow, Miss Edith Kermit, 
43 

Centennial of Presbyterian 
Home Missions, 363 

Chaffee, General, promoted 
hy Mr. Roosevelt, 148 

"Character and Civiliza- 
tion," lecture by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 252 

Charity, always secretly 
dispensed by Mr. Roose- 
velt, 153 

Chautauquas, offers made by 
to Mr. Roosevelt, 206 

Cheney, Mr., quoted, 144, 
152, 153 

Chicago Convention (1912) 
219, 267; scene at, de- 
scribed, 320 

Children, dislike of con- 
demned by Mr. Roosevelt, 
214; punishment of, 316 

China, f-ienship of, 368 

Christian, important quali- 
ties of a, 260, 261, 262 

Christian men successful, 
111 

Christians, not expected to 
be flawless, 16 

Christ Episcopal Church, 
Oyster Bay, 346 

Church, effect of, on com- 
munity, 327-329; influence 
of, 332; joined by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 341 

"Circuit riders," gratitude 
to, 330 

City Reform Club, speech at, 
72 

Civil Service Commission, 
116 

Clemenceau, Benjamin 
Eugene, plea of, 225 

Clinton, Mrs, quoted, 41 

Cole, Samuel Valentine, 
poem by, 113 



Communion, taken by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 334 

Congress, a message to re- 
specting corporations and 
labor, 183 

Coolidge, Vice-President, 
quoted, 92 

Coudert, F. R., quoted, 66 

Cowboy, experience of Mr. 
Roosevelt with, 115 

Crane, Frank, quoted, 137 

Credal tests, 247 

Crook, W. H., quoted, 43 

Crown Princess of Sweden, 
incident concerning, 287 

Cuba, 110 

Cuninghame, R. J., quoted, 
298 

Curtis, George William, ac- 
tion of, 81 

Cutler, Arthur, quoted, 76 

Davenport, Homer, 188 
Death, calmly considered by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 268 
Death of Mr. Roosevelt, 203 
Depew, Chauncey, action of, 

106 
Dewey, Admiral, criticized, 

188 
"Dignity of Labor, The," ad- 
dress by Mr. Roosevelt, 45 
Divorce, 286 
Dogma, theological, 257 
Domestic life of Mr. Roose- 
velt, 284 
Direct Primary Bill, 189^ 
Dishonesty, Mr. Roosevelt's 

view of, 98 
Drinking and prohibition, 
292; attitude of Mr. 
Roosevelt toward, 297 
Dunne, Peter Finley, 150 
Duties, public, fearlessly 
performed, 134 

Earl Lectures, 312 



INDEX 



377 



Edward, King, incident con- 
nected witli funeral of, 159 

Edwards, Jonathan, cited, 44 

Egotism, admitted, 113; a 
name wrongly given to 
Mr. Roosevelt's intense 
patriotism, 116 

Eighteenth Amendment 

favored by Mr. Roosevelt, 
302 

Enemies utilized by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 158 

European Addresses, 205 

Familiarity with Mr. Roose- 
velt rebuked, 155 

"Favors," attitude of Mr. 
Roosevelt toward, 283 

Flunkeyism offensive to Mr. 
Roosevelt, 131 

Foch, General, 12 

"Foreign" cases, 288 

Foreign missions, wrongly 
ridiculed, 365 

Forsyth, Rev. D. D., quoted, 
358 

Franchise tax bill, 105, 185 

Franklin, Benjamin, a reli- 
gious man, 12 

French people, message of 
Mr. Roosevelt to, 208 

Fulton, Robert, 20 

Garfield, James R., quoted, 
232 

Gaynor, Mayor, referred to, 
108 

General Conference, Meth- 
odist Episcopal, address 
to, by Mr. Roosevelt, 263 

Germans, indictment of, 220 

Germany forced to with- 
draw from South America, 
103 

Gideons, the, work of, com- 
mended, 318 

Gilder, Richard Watson, 
quoted, 163 



Gladstone, William E., 

quoted, 11, 199 
Globe, the New York, edi- 
torial in, 225 
God, belief in expressed by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 166 
Golden Rule, the, defined by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 93 
Gompers, Samuel, rebuked 

by Mr. Roosevelt, 95 
Grace Reformed Church, 

349 
Graft, political, fought by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 99, 104, 218 
Great Britain, sidestepping 

"statesmen" in, 216 
Great Teacher, the, words 

of, 323 
Grey, Sir Edward, 217 
Griscom, Lloyd, 367 
Gun play, bluff called by Mr. 

Roosevelt, 80 

Haakon, King, 178 

Hadley, Governor, action of, 

123 
Hagedorn, Herman, cited, 

211 • statement prepared 

by, 245; quoted, 249 
Haig, General, 12 
Hale, William Bayard, 

quoted, 208 
Hall, Charles C, lecture by, 

252 
Hamilton, Alexander, 20 
Hanna, Senator, quoted, 141 
Harding, Warren G., letter 

written by, facing page 

10; quoted, 229 
Harrison, Benjamin, served 

by Mr. Roosevelt, 122 
Harvard Republican Club, 

Bible presented to Mr. 

Roosevelt by, 305 
Hay, John, quoted, 119, 129 
Hayes, President Ruther- 
ford B., cited, 22 



378 



INDEX 



History, American, made by 
Christians, 11 

Hoar, Senator, visit of, to 
Mr. Roosevelt, 172 

Holmes, Justice Oliver Wen- 
dell, 269 

"How Firm a Foundation," 
only hymn sung at fun- 
eral of Mr. Roosevelt, 238 

Hughes, Hon. Charles E., 
quoted, 53; attitude of Mr. 
Roosevelt toward, 150; 
incident related by, 156; 
referred to, 337 

Hugo, Victor, quoted, 18 

Ideals, high, practiced by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 204 
"Ideals of Citizenship," lec- 
ture of Mr. Roosevelt on, 

250 
Iglehart, Dr., quoted, 204, 

333; interview reported 

by, 264; referred to, 273, 

326, 366 
Illiteracy among Americans, 

119 
Immigrants, spoken to by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 322 
Immorality in men, 276 
"In God we trust," matter of 

taking the words from 

coin, 248, 249 
Indians, American, work 

among, 364 
"Influence," not within 

reach of, 283 
Irritable, Mr. Roosevelt 

never known to be, 114 

Jefferson, Rev. Charles E., 
quoted, 175 

Jesus, program of, followed 
by great men, 11 ; divinity 
of, accepted by Mr. Roose- 
velt, 259 



Justice, Mr. Roosevelt's 
method of applying, 180 

Kaiser, the, incident rela- 
tive to, 135; failure of, to 
patronize President 
Roosevelt, 156 

King, Henry C, lecture by, 
252 

Kipling, Rudyard, cable 
from, 106 

Kitten, picked up by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 158 

Knox, Attorney-General, 58 

Kohlsaat, Herman, quoted, 
277 

Krauskoff, Rabbi, quoted, 
345 

Lambert, Dr. Alexander, 

cited, 17, 50; quoted, 35, 

57, 70, 88, 120, 139, 180, 

187, 251, 257, 268, 272, 278, 

286, 319 
Leary, Mr., quoted, 88, 233, 

240, 243, 252, 273, 280, 290, 

336, 344 
Lee, Benjamin, 43 
Lee, Gerald, quoted, 93 
Legislation, interference of, 

Mr Roosevelt to secure, 

115 
Legislature, Mr. Roosevelt's 

first term in, 101 
Letter, a rebuke, addressed 

to Christian F. Reisner, 

281; the matter explained, 

282 
Lewis, Dean, quoted, 35, 105, 

223, 271; cited, 74, 155, 

200, 233 
Libel suit, "intemperance," 

won by Mr. Roosevelt, 

212; incident of, 279; trial 

of case, 293-297 
License, saloon, rate raised, 

184 



INDEX 



379 



Lincoln, Abraham, story of, 
56; Mr, Roosevelt's re- 
spect for, 129 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, re- 
ferred to, 84, 123; quoted, 
66, 91, 146, 190, 205, 285 

Loeb, William, 17, 46; 
quoted, 116, 204, 271, 289, 
297. 344, 357; story told 
by, 224 

"Loyal Publication Society," 
24 

Ludlow, Dr. James M., 
quoted, 21, 25, 31, 325, 
335 

March, General, letter to, 
194 

Martin, Edward S., referred 
to, 20 

Martin, E. B., cited, 51 

McGrath, Mr., cited, 17; 
quoted, 130, 139, 143, 164, 
206, 345 

McKinley, William, forgiv- 
ing nature of, 12 

McLoughlin, Mr., quoted, 
335 

Meeker, Ezra, visit of, to 
White House, 142 

Menzes, Rabbi, quoted, 200 

Methodist congregations, 
331 

Micah 6. 8, the standard of 
Mr. Roosevelt, 257; con- 
stantly repeated by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 321 

Military training, universal, 
favored by Mr. Roosevelt, 
147 

Missions, foreign, com- 
mended by Mr. Roosevelt, 
369 

Mistral, Mr., letter to, 250 

Mitchel, John Purroy, inci- 
dent in campaign of, for 
mayor of New York, 173 



Money, secondary, 92 
Monroe Doctrine, 103 
Mores, Marquis de, incident 

concerning, 79 
Morgan, James, quoted, 322 
Morley, Mr., quoted, 17, 133 
Mother, cable to Mr. Riis', 

141 
Motherhood, exhortations 

concerning, 215 
Moving pictures, Mr. Roose- 
velt not averse to ap- 
pearing in, 170 
Mrs. Roosevelt, an ideal 
home-maker, 39; maiden 
name of, 43; descendant 
of Jonathan Edwards, 44 ; 
incident concerning, 46; 
quoted, 315 
Multimillionaire, material 
life of the, 139 

Nast, Thomas, tribute to, 74 
Newett, George A., sued by 

Mr. Roosevelt for libel, 

293-297 
Newspaper "Cabinet" 

formed by Mr. Roosevelt, 

121 
Newspaper men, warning 

given to, 38; loyalty of to 

Mr. Roosevelt, 136; given 

to joking, 248 
Newspapers, a wrong kind 

of, 100 

Office, appointing men to, 
97; low type of men nomi- 
nated for, 300 

O'Laughlin, John Callan, 
370 

Organization, party, 341 

Osborn, H. P., review of 
book by, 265 

Outlook, The, Mr. Roose- 
velt's connection with, 
156 



380 



INDEX 



Oyster Bay, churches in, 
233; Mr. Roosevelt's 
church attendance at, 346 

Pacific Theological Semi- 
nary lectures, cited, 41, 
46, 50, 53, 98, 172, 174, 
249, 286, 312, 316 

Paine, Tom, incident con- 
cerning, 239 

Panama Canal, visit of 
President Roosevelt to, 
178; building of referred 
to, 195 

Panama, taking of, defended, 
115; importance of, 195 

Pardons for unquestioned 
criminals discouraged by 
Mr. Roosevelt, 155 

Parker, Judge, referred to, 
117 

Parkhurst, Dr. Charles H., 
33 

Pastors, city, address to, 
337 

Payne, George H., quoted, 
154, 191 

Payne, Mr., quoted, 278 

Peck, Professor Harry Thur- 
ston, 227 

Penn, William, 20 

Perks, Sir Robert, visit of, 
to Mr. Roosevelt, 259 

Pershing, General, 12 ; 
quoted, 53 

Personal approval enjoyed 
by Mr. Roosevelt, 167 

Pharisees, "legal" dodges of 
the, 98 

Philippines, task of America 
in, 190 

Phrases coined by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 280 

Pilgrim Fathers, believers 
in prayer, 12 

Pinchot, Gifford, cited, 17; 
quoted, 116, 119, 205, 207, 



226, 279; statements by, 

238 
Pioneers aided by 

preachers, 330 
Piatt, Senator, 185 
Police, Mr. Roosevelt's first 

interest in, 31 
Police commissioner, 145, 

159, 187, 285 
Politicians, policy of, 244 
Polk, Dr., story of, 167 
Pope not visited by Mr. 

Roosevelt, 197, 198 
Popularity of Mr. Roosevelt, 

his own view of, 133 
Post Office Department, 

graft in, 218 
Prayer, custom of formal, 270 
"Preparedness," 319 
Pritchett, Henry P., 129 
Prize fighting, 284 
Profanity, not used by Mr. 

Roosevelt, 276, 279 
Progressive Party, social 

program of, 109; work of, 

117; referred to, 301 
"Progressive" statement, a, 

193 
Prohibition favored by Mr. 

Roosevelt, 299, 301 
Prophet, Mr. Roosevelt con- 
sidered himself one, 94 
"Protective War Claims 

Association," 24 
Protestant institutions, 327 
Public Opinion, editorial in, 

226 
Putnam, Major George 

Haven, 17; quoted, 26, 46, 

84, 240, 252 
"Put out the light," Mr. 

Roosevelt's last words, 

274 

Quay, Senator, 157 
Quigg, Lemuel, referred to, 
91 



INDEX 



381 



Race suicide, 215 

Ranck, Rev. Henry, 349 

Reformation, believed in by 
Mr. Roosevelt, 268 

Religion the heart of Mr. 
Roosevelt's life, 11; the 
builder of earth's greatest 
leaders, 11; the subject of 
not to be left to evidence 
of mere declarations of an 
author, 13; does not con- 
sist of a single virtue, 16; 
not used as a cloak by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 228; natural to 
Mr. Roosevelt, 324 

Republic, new Russian, 
cited, 95 

Richberg, a party leader, 
quoted, 120; referred to, 
124 

Riches, a hindrance to suc- 
cess, 71 

Rlis, Jacob, story told by, 
34; quoted, 59, 91, 113. 
147, 168, 188, 217, 257; 
complimented by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 136; dealings of 
with War Department, 
138; a cable concerning, 
141; recovery of, from ill- 
ness, 142; his apprecia- 
tion of Mr. Roosevelt, 
166; how attracted to Mr. 
Roosevelt, 209; plea of re- 
fused by Mr. Roosevelt, 
222 

Riots at East Saint Louis 
condemned, 95 

Rixey, Surgeon-General, 186 

Robbins, Thomas A., story 
told by, 160 

Robinson, Mrs. Corinne 
Roosevelt, cited, 17; 
quoted, 26, 28, 30, 32, 35, 
36, 57, 71, 74, 146, 176, 
201, 229, 251, 266, 271, 
306, 343, 357; address by, 



162; Sunday school in her 

home described by, 207 
Roman Catholics, South 

American, 326 
Roosevelt, Alice, story 

about, 67 
Roosevelt Hospital, 26 
Roosevelt, Isaac, 20 
Roosevelt, Kermit, quoted, 

52, 55, 126, 195, 203, 229, 
344 

Roosevelt, Nicholas, J., 20 

Roosevelt, Quentin, tribute 
to, 53; exploits of de- 
scribed, 60, 61; in amateur 
theatricals, 64; death of 
referred to by his father, 
66; news of death of, 334; 
last communion of, 335 

Roosevelt, R. B., a Presi- 
dential elector, 22 

Roosevelt, Theodore, reli- 
gion of, not emphasized 
by his biographers, 11; 
the kind of man built by 
pure religion, 13; work- 
able creed possessed by, 
15; quoted, 15, 17, 19, 20, 
21, 28, 30, 33, 35, 37, 41, 
42, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 

53, 55, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 
68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 80, 81, 
84, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 
98, 100, 102, 103, 104, 107, 
108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 
117, 118, 123, 124, 127, 128, 
131, 133, 135, 139, 145, 147, 
150, 151, 157, 162, 165, 167, 
169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 184, 
185, 188, 189, 190, 193, 199, 
201, 204, 208, 210, 212, 
215, 216, 234, 240, 243, 249, 
250, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 
259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 266, 
267, 269, 278, 280, 281, 282, 
283, 284, 292, 298, 299, 300, 
302. 306-311, 313, 317, 321, 



382 



INDEX 



326, 827-334, 336, 337, 339, 
343, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 
362, 363,364,366, 368, 369; 
religious training of, 15; 
religion of, traced back 
to childhood, 16; reared 
in a religious home, 17; 
childhood home of, 19, 28; 
paternal ancestor of, 19; 
ancestry of, on mother's 
side, 20; teaching of 
father of, 20; loyal to 
memory of his father, 22 ; 
incident of inaugural of, 
22; raised in a "loyal" 
household, 23; mother of, 
27; interest of, in Police 
Department, 31; meaning 
of name of, 31; first 
notable book read by, 
32; as a Sunday-school 
teacher, 33, 34; location of 
home of, 37; trophies be- 
longing to, 38; letter of, 
to Kermit, 39, 42; hospi- 
tality of, 40; family rela- 
tionships of, 40; children 
of, 42 ; practiced what 
he preached, 43; weekly 
letter to his children, 44; 
effect of Quentin's death 
upon, 44; his view of 
woman suffrage, 45; chil- 
dren of, religiously in- 
structed, 47; rebuke ad- 
ministered by, 49; an 
athlete, 50; religious 
education emphasized by, 
51; attitude of, toward 
Sunday schools, 52; a 
helpful father, 55; no 
hardness in nature, 57; 
valued children's confi- 
dence, 58; camping trips 
of, 64; in character of 
Santa Claus, 68; attend- 
ance of children at public 



school, 68; commencement 
address by, 69; providen- 
tially prepared for his 
career, 71; wealth ac- 
cepted as a God given 
trust, 72; called "Teedie," 
73; diary kept by, 75; a 
sufferer from asthma, 75; 
timidity of, 76; fear, ban- 
ished by, 76; concentra- 
tion of, 77; hunting feat 
performed by, 77; vigor- 
ous experiences of, 78; his 
life with cow punchers, 
79; not primarily inter- 
ested in party politics, 81; 
interest in War of 1812, 
83; city-raised, 85; his 
entrance into politics, 85; 
discouraging tests, 86, 87; 
trip to Yellowstone Park, 
88 ; his salary with The 
Outlook, 92; his sturdy 
personality not an acci- 
dent, 93; believed himself 
a prophet to warn 
America, 94; address of, 
at Christiania, Norway, 
96; address of, at Grant's 
birthplace, 97; moral dis- 
orders believed to be 
dangerous, 99; personal 
attack made on by 
hired thug, 100; aur 
nouncement of, that sa- 
loons must close, 106; a 
"Trust," caught stealing, 
prosecuted by, 108; return 
of, from Africa, 108; en- 
trance into Philippines 
favored by, 110 ; a leader 
of righteousness, 112; his 
admitted egotism, 113; 
never irritable, 114; re- 
sponsibility to his Crea- 
tor, 118; association of, 
with scalawags, 121; invi- 



INDEX 



383 



tations to lecture received 
by, 122; illness of, in 
South Africa, 125; at- 
tempted assassination of, 
in Milwaukee, 126; readi- 
ness of, for possible attack, 
127; incidBiit of his inau- 
guration, 128, 129; never 
"swallowed" his convic- 
tions, 130; reception of, 
on return from African 
trip, 132; courtesy of, 
135 ; popular with news- 
paper men, 136; incident 
of funeral of, 137; patience 
of, 139; his thoughtful 
consideration of others, 
143, 144; not an "election- 
time" friend, 150; lecture 
of, on African trip, 151; 
approachableness of, 153; 
democratic qualities of, 
157; a lover of animals, 
158; accepts vice-presi- 
dency of Public School 
Athletic League, 161; 
pleased by backing of the 
"common" people, 168; 
happy spirit of, 172; his 
dealings with corporations 
and "labor," 181 ; speech 
of, nominating William 
McKinley, 190; possessed 
many friends, 199; health 
of, broken, 202; last ap- 
pearance of, 202; death of, 
203; practiced what he 
preached, 212; charged 
with meddling, 217; for- 
giving toward adversaries, 
222; applauded by Wil- 
liam Barnes, 223; home 
town tribute to, 224; his 
attitude toward a re- 
formed criminal, 226; 
reticent on the subject of 
religion, 228; a true 



Christian, 230 ; con- 
siderate of all forms of 
faith, 239; tribute of uni- 
versity students to, 242; 
injustice and tyranny 
fought by, 246; spiritual- 
mindedness of, 249; clear- 
cut creed possessed by, 
254; pure and reverend 
mind of, 275; masculinity 
of, 276; testimony that he 
was not profane, 278; 
could not endure a lie, 
280; fond of boxing, 284; 
purity of, 291; not a total 
abstainer, 298; inaugu- 
rated Vice-President, 305; 
asked to resign as Sunday- 
school teacher, 342; fun- 
eral of, 348; his church 
home in Washington, D. 
C, 349 

Roosevelt, Theodore, Sr., 
political experience of, 22; 
marriage of, 22; legisla- 
tion carried through by, 
23; member of Union 
League Club, 24; organ- 
izer of Soldiers' Employ- 
ment Bureau, 24; inter- 
ested in Newsboys' Lodg- 
ing Houses, 25, 33; Roose- 
velt Hospital due to efforts 
of, 26; supporter of Y. M. 
C. A., 27; death of, 27; a 
Sunday-school teacher, 33 

Roosevelt, W. Emlen, cited, 
17; quoted, 29, 77, 121, 
140, 239, 278, 289, 344 

Root, Elihu, quoted, 91; tri- 
bute to, 148 

Rough Riders, 122; first 
skirmish of, 147; warmly 
regarded by Mr. Roose- 
velt, 152 ; nicknames 
given to, 171; words of 
Mr. Roosevelt to, 196 



384 



INDEX 



Royalty, English, Mr. Roose- 
velt's attitude toward, 131 

Russell, Alfred Henry, posi- 
tion of, commended, 254 

Saloon, the, Mr. Roosevelt 

against, 299 
Salvation Army, tribute to, 

269 
Scandalmongers, detested by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 174 
Schick, Rev. John M., 350 
Schools, public, 68 
Scientists, rationalistic, 264; 

dogmatic, 269 
Self-government, 261 
Sentiment, what it is, 136 
Sewall, "Bill," quoted, 48, 

76, 79, 86, 87, 114, 119, 

125, 145, 149, 211, 230; 

letter of, to Mr. Roosevelt, 

231; cited, 17, 76, 104; 

visit of, to President 

Roosevelt, 148 
Shaw, Albert, quoted, 208 
Slattery, Rev. C. L., quoted, 

37 
Smith, Dr. Arthur H., sug- 
gestion made by, 367 
Smith, General, trial and 

discharge of, 154 
Sobat, mission at, described 

by Mr. Roosevelt, 369 
Social Evolution (Kidd), 

criticized, 255, 260 
Socialism, French, 215 
Soldiers become generals, 

148; commended, 358 
Soldiers' Employment 

Bureau, 24 
Sorbonne, the, Paris lecture 

delivered by Mr. Roosevelt 

at, 253, 265 
Southern blood, 20 
Spanish War, 345 
Special favors refused by 

Mr. Roosevelt, 121 



Spurgeon, J. H., quoted, 165 
Stanley, Henry M., 32 
State dinner at White 

House, incident of, 132 
Steerage, address in, 322 
Stimson, Colonel H. L., 

work of and words of, 231 
Stoddard, H. L., cited, 17; 

quoted, 49, 120, 162, 169, 

175, 237, 263 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 

quoted, 70; referred to, 74 
Straus, Oscar, cited, 17; 

quoted, 119, 227, 236, 237 
Street, Julian, quoted, 66, 

169, 202 
Success, the essential of, 90 
Sullivan, Mark, quoted, 277 
Sun, New York, quoted, 326 
Sunday closing, 101 
Sunday, not a holiday, 360; 

pleasure seeking on, 361 
Sunday school at home, the, 

207 

Taft, W. H., referred to, 85, 
124; quoted, 224, 230 

"Tainted" people, 288 

Talmage, Rev. George E., 
348; quoted, 355 

Tammany, words to, 822 

Tarbell, Ida M., story told 
by, 56 

Temper, Mr. Roosevelt's 
difficulty ^vith, 166 

Text, Mr. Roosevelt's 
favorite, 321 

Thayer, Mr., quoted, 35, 81, 
82, 123, 140, 233 

Theodore Roosevelt's 
Letters to His Children, 
37; wide sale of, 48 

Thompson, Charles W., 
quoted, 141 

Thompson, D.D., letter writ- 
ten to by Mr. Roosevelt, 



INDEX 



385 



167; quoted, 299; cited, 
330 
Thwing, Eugene, quoted, 91, 

242 
Tillman, Senator, 158 
Titanic, sinking of, 12 
Tobacco, never used by Mr. 

Roosevelt, 284 
Treaty, peace, between Rus- 
sia and Japan, 103 
Trevelyan, George, cited, 
286 

Uganda, benefited by United 
States, 369 

United States Senate, 
bribery and graft in, 107 

University of Berlin, lec- 
ture delivered at, by Mr. 
Roosevelt, 266 

University students, Eng- 
lish, doggerel written by, 
242 

Unselfishness of Mr. Roose- 
velt, evidences of, 124, 125 

Van Valkenburg, A. G., cited, 

17; quoted, 40, 118, 127; a 

critic of speech by Mr. 

Roosevelt, 130; quoted, 

199, 206, 219, 221, 232, 251, 

278 289 

Velsor, Calvin B., cited, 312 

"Venezuela, case of, 196 

Volumes, quoted from, list 

of, 13, 14 
Von Sternberg, referred to, 
177 

Washbume, Charles A., 
quoted, 84, 245, 342 

Washington, Booker T., 
entertainment of by Mr. 
Roosevelt at dinner, 146 

Washington, George, peti- 
tions offered by, 12 



Wealth, makes service pos- 
sible, 72 

Welling, Richard, quoted, 
289 

White, Henry, 126 

White, William Allen, 
quoted, 232, 255, 326, 356 

Whitman, Governor Charles 
S., 302 

Wilson, Woodrow, reelec- 
tion of, 117; refusal of, to 
permit Mr. Roosevelt to 
take military leadership, 
122; referred to, 146; 
magnanimous offer of, 185 

Woman's Central Associa- 
tion of Relief, 24 

Wood, Andrew B., quoted, 
301 

Wood, Henry A. Wise, 
quoted, 137 

Wood, Leonard B., letter 
written by, facing page 
11; cited, 17; quoted, 176, 
230 

Woodbury, John, 185 

Woodson, Rev. Charles R., 
quoted, 151, 234 

World War, the, Mr. Roose- 
velt's view of, 110, 365 

World, a God-ordered, 263 

Yellow journalism, 100 

Yellowstone Park, President 
Roosevelt's visit to, 88; 
incident of trip, 138; ad- 
dress made on trip, 152 

Young, General, promoted 
by Mr. Roosevelt, 148 

Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, address of Mr. 
Roosevelt at, 290 

Zaring, E. Robb, incident re- 
lated by, 322 



H 91 80 






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